The CBI Report in Full -- Part 6
In the year 1990, India was touring New Zealand and both Ajay Sharma and Manoj Prabhakar were in the team. MK requested Ajay Sharma over telephone from India to introduce Manoj Prabhakar to him and MK talked to Prabhakar from India over telephone.
During that tour to New Zealand, he used to regularly ring up Ajay Sharma and gather information about the weather, pitch, team composition etc and based on that information, he used to operate his business and made a good amount of money. He does not remember if he had paid any money to Ajay Sharma for this, but said that he may have given him some gifts.
After the New Zealand tour, India was scheduled to tour England, but Ajay Sharma was dropped from the team. MK requested Ajay Sharma to personally introduce Manoj Prabhakar to him, which Ajay Sharma duly did and Prabhakar was paid a sum of Rs 40,000 to help MK during the England tour.
MK also promised to pay him money equivalent to a Maruti Gypsy which Manoj Prabhakar wanted to purchase, if he could provide useful information during the England tour. According to MK, Manoj Prabhakar gave him information about all aspects of the Indian team and he also underperformed in one of the Tests which ended in a draw.
After the tour, when the team came back to India, MK fulfilled his promise and paid money to Manoj Prabhakar to buy a Maruti Gypsy with wide tyres. Somewhere around that time, MK also visited Manoj Prabhakar's house in Ghaziabad and had dinner with him.
Manoj Prabhakar promised to introduce him to other international players against a payment of Rs 50,000 each and after dinner that night, spoke to Gus Logie of West Indies over telephone. However, Gus Logie refused to cooperate in any manner with them.
MK further stated sometime thereafter, the Sri Lankan team visited India and Manoj Prabhakar introduced Aravinda D'Silva to him for a price. MK established good rapport with Aravinda D'Silva. Later, MK contacted D'Silva for an introduction to Martin Crowe and D'Silva called Martin Crowe over telephone and told him about MK.
Accordingly, MK met Martin Crowe in 1991 in New Zealadn and also had lunch at his house. MK added that Martin's wife Simone was also present during the meeting. MK has stated that he had paid a sum of $20,000 to Martin Crowe in exchange for information about the pitch, weather, team composition, etc, whenever the New Zealand team played.
MK however stated that Martin Crowe refused to fix any matches for him. Around that period, there was a match between Wills Cup Winners of Pakistan and Wills Cup Winners of India at Feroze Shah Kotla, Delhi. He does not remember the name of the Pakistan team, but remembers that it was captained by Javed Miandad.
MK requested Prabhakar to introduce him to Salim Malik, which he did. He thereafter met Salim Malik at Hotel Maurya Sheraton and struck a deal with him to fix that match without the knowledge of Javed Miandad. The Pakistani team lost the match after a close finish and he paid a sum of Rs 8 lakh to Salim Malik and MK also earned roughly the same amount of money.
He does not know who were the other players whom Salim Malik had roped in to fix this match. By now MK realized the importance of having information about weather, pitch, etc and chose a young boy, Sanjay Sharma, who was living in his locality, and trained him to gather information about the nature of the pitch, team composition, weather etc and sent him to England.
Sanjay Sharma's job was to gather all relevant information from the local newspapers, TV etc nad pass on the same to MK. This helped him a great deal in his business. Somewhere around this period, there were some festival matches in Sri Lanka and many international players were also taking part in it.
Manoj Prabhakar was also playing in that series. MK rang up Manoj Prabhakar from India and requested him to introduce some Australian players who were also taking part in that tournament. Manoj Prabhakar rang him back and informed him that all the teams were staying at the Taj Samudra and he could introduce Dean Jones to him.
MK immediately left for Colombo. Manoj Prabhakar was given a sum of Rs two lakh for this introduction. MK offered an amount of $40,000 to Dean Jones to give him information about the Australian team's strategy, morale, team composition and about the probable result, etc, whenever Australians played.
Dean Jones promised to think about the offer. During that series, Manoj Prabhakar also introduced Brian Lara and Ranatunga to MK, but they were not paid any money.
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