OWN CORRRESPONDENT, New Delhi | Tuesday 10.00am.
SOUTH Africa will allow Indian police detectives to question disgraced South African skipper Hansie Cronje for his alleged role in match-fixing, Pretoria’s chief diplomat in New Delhi said on Tuesday. The Asian Age newspaper quoted South African High Commissioner to India, Maite Nkoana Mashabane, as saying that Pretoria will give the go-ahead provided India’s Central Bureau of Investigations (CBI) makes such a request.
The request has to be “need-based” and “issue-based, the newspaper quoted Mashabane as saying in the eastern Indian city of Calcutta.
She also hinted that a South African commission, headed by ex-judge Edwin King, probing the charges against South African cricketers may go to India next month to persue its own probe.
So far neither the CBI nor India’s cricket board has sought permission to send detectives to South Africa to question Cronje and his teammates, Herschelle Gibbs, Nicky Boje and Pieter Strydom.
Delhi Police Commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma said at the weekend that a police team may be dispatched to South Africa if required.
Delhi police on April 7 charged the four visiting cricketers with taking money from bookies during the five one-day internationals South Africa played in India between March 9 and 19. India won the series 3-2.
Cronje, who initially denied the allegations, was sacked after he admitted having been “dishonest” with the South African cricket board over his activities in India.
Mashabane told the Asian Age that the allegations will not hit bilateral ties.
“Cricket diplomacy” will continue irrespecive of the findings of the respective fact-finding teams, she said.
“A few wrong-doers on either side will not spoil the bilateral understanding between our countries.”
“These minor hiccups cannot de-stabilise our relationship since it is not only friendship that binds us, but something more, blood ties between people of both the countries,” Mashabane said.
Delhi police have said they have tapes of conversations between the disgraced South African skipper and a London-based Indian bookmaker, Sanjiv Chawla, as evidence, but have rejected demands from Pretoria for copies.
Meanwhile, Indian police have asked Interpol to speed up efforts to obtain voice samples of Cronje.
A top Delhi police official, part of a team investigating the match-fixing case, said that two reminders have been sent to the international police co-ordination agency to speed up efforts.
“Interpol is taking its time so we sent two urgent reminders asking for Cronje’s voice samples as well as other evidence needed for the case to go to the courts,” the official said.
He said the reminders were sent “very recently”.
“Once we have all that, we will start thinking of extraditing Cronje and the others charged in the case,” he said, a day after Delhi police commissioner Ajai Raj Sharma claimed significant progress in the probe.
South Africa and India are not bound by an extradition treaty. — AFP