Attempts made to procure IPL probe audio recordings: Subramaniam

Zee Media Bureau New Delhi: In what could become yet another embarrassment for the Board of Cricket Control in India (BCCI), senior advocate Gopal Subramaniam claimed that attempts were made to procure the audio recordings of the depositions made to the Justice Mukul Mudgal panel. Advocate Subramaniam, who appeared for the Mudgal panel in the Supreme Court on Tuesday said that people, possibly involved in the IPL corruption scandal, have tried to snoop upon the Indian Premier League (IPL) scam probe. The revelation arrived on a day when the court dismissed the cricket board`s three-member panel, which included former India captain and renown commentator Ravi Shastri, former Calcutta High Court Judge JN Patel and former CBI director RK Raghavan. Subramaniam further added that recordings were stopped after the panel suspected the snooping into the recordings. Last October, the apex court had constituted the Justice Mukul Mudgal panel to investigate the spot-fixing and betting case in the case-rich IPL. The three-member panel led by Justice Mudgal, a retired Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, has Additional Solicitor General L Nageswara Rao and senior advocate Nilay Dutta in the committee. And on February 10, the committee submitted its report to the court after conducting a four-month long probe. It is learnt that cricketers, board officials, cops, lawyers and even journalists had deposed before the panel and depositions were recorded during the probe on equipment provided by BCCI. The bench headed by justice AK Patnaik, showing leniency, allowed N Srinivasan and BCCI to hear some portions of recordings with a warning to maintain complete confidentiality about the contents of the tapes and not to leak it to anybody. Later, the bench asked the probe committee to deposit the recordings to the court`s secretary general. With Agency inputs