Dubai: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) has given a clean chit to Suresh Raina and Ravindra Jadeja, named in Lalit Modi’s letter to the International Cricket Council (ICC) alleging that the two Indian cricketers had taken bribes from a bookie who was also a renowned builder.
Modi, the ousted Indian Premier League (IPL) chairman and commissioner, had through the letter named Raina, Jadeja and West Indies cricketer Dwayne Bravo, who were all IPL’s Chennai Super Kings players, as having been given apartments and money by the builder.
The ICC has confirmed that they received the letter from Modi on June 2013, accusing the three international players of being involved in betting and had passed it to its Anti Corruption and Security Unit (ACSU) to deal with it in accordance with its procedures.
Anurag Thakur, the BCCI secretary, made it clear at a press conference in New Delhi that the players had a clean chit from BCCI until the ICC inquiry revealed the truth regarding the allegations made by Modi. The stance of BCCI is that that it was jurisdiction of the ICC to probe against the players and the BCCI will not conduct any independent inquiry into the matter.
Modi, who was part of the ruling group in the BCCI before being forced to leave the country on charges of financial irregularities, has been firing salvos at N. Srinivasan, the former President of the BCCI and all those who turned against him and ousted him as the chief of IPL. Srinivasan was the owner Chennai Super Kings in which the three players played in the IPL.
Raina’s name had been figuring frequently in controversies relating to match-fixing. In 2010, a London newspaper reported that Sri Lanka Cricket had reported of Raina being seen in company of a woman linked to an associate of a bookie. Soon after Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee’s findings on the IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal had submitted a list of 13 players and officials to the Supreme Court last year, there were reports that Raina’s name was on the list.
