IPL spot-fixing: Delhi Police's 'showcase trial' is self-defeating

To give credit where credit is due, the Delhi Police did admirably well to piece together a prima facie case in the spot-fixing scandal centred around three Rajasthan Royals players. In the police officials’ own telling, when the investigation began, cricket was farthest from their minds. Telephone chatter traced to Karachi, Dubai and Mumbai - the  “usual suspects” on the hawala-crime syndicates map - led them to believe that international crime syndicates were possibly plotting a terror attack in India. The frequent reference in these conversations to “targets” strengthened these suspicions. Subsequent investigations - and yet more diligent electronic surveillance - led the trail to the IPL spot-fixing enterprise, and, in particular, to the three Rajasthan Royals players who were arrested on Wednesday. Even then, the investigators sat on their hands, and waited for corroborative evidence to establish that the run of play on the field was in line with pre-arranged patterns as allegedly finalised among the bookies and the players. On this basis, they were able to establish a preliminary case to show that the giveaway of runs and the coded messages that the players sent out to the bookies during the match played out in precisely the same way that the bookmakers had deigned them. [caption id=“attachment_791861” align=“alignright” width=“380”] The Delhi Police is resorting to a showcase trial. Naresh Sharma/Firstpost[/caption] It was then that the police officials moved in and made the high-profile arrests, bang in the middle of the IPL season. The fact that they were not inhibited by the political overhang on the case is admirable: given that the cricket administration in India is in the hands of politically influential moneybags, the Delhi Police surely knew they were walking a landmine zone, and just the fact that they were able to keep the investigations off the radar, so to speak, until they made the sensational arrests says much about the professionalism that characterised this particular investigation. But ever since then, and particularly over the past two days, the conduct of the investigation gives reason to wonder if that heightened sense of professionalism is already on a slippery slope. Whereas the focus of the investigation ought to have been on putting together a cast-iron case that will stand up in a court of law, the Delhi Police appears to be conducting a “showcase” trial in the public domain. The selective leaks by “sources” about the “confessional statements” made by the three arrested players - and the sly name-dropping to implicate others who are on their radar - do not quite measure up to the same standards of professionalism that the Delhi Police themselves exhibited earlier. More seriously, these leaks - which the hypermedia have amplified - have the potential to compromise the investigation and take merit away from the case that the investigators may put together for the prosecutors to take forward. For a start, none of the “confessional statements” that have purportedly been made is admissible as evidence in a court of law unless they were made in the presence of a District Magistrate (which they were not in this case). No useful purpose is served by the hourly drip-drip of information from “sources”, which in any case are not internally consistent - and for that reason are far from credible. Nor is it particularly educative to know about the dietary and sleeping habits of the arrested players , however colourful it maybe. For another,  the months-long preliminary investigation that preceded the arrests was successful precisely because they were enveloped in utmost secrecy. In much the same way, the investigation can be best advanced by keeping it discreet, not in revealing their hand prematurely and in a manner that can compromise their case before the court. The case may be made, of course, that all this is an elaborate exercise in psy-ops to throw the arrested players off-balance and extract more information from them. After all, what’s going on between the interrogators and the three arrested players is an echo of the Prisoner’s Dilemma  parlour-game. But even if it was, the best results may be procured in a “laboratory” setting, where the participants are cut off from external sources of information. In the past too, investigators in India have tended to go public even before the investigations were complete, thereby severely compromising the process. As I’ve argued earlier, a “media circus trial” - like we saw in the case of Abu Jundal   or, more recently in the case of Liaqat Shah - isn’t helpful. The Delhi Police is perhaps making this a showcase trial in order to regain some of the standing it had lost with its insensitive handling of the recent rape of a five-year-old in New Delhi. That instinct is understandable, but is nevertheless self-defeating. Nothing will enhance the Delhi Police’s public stature more than wrapping up the investigations, making more arrests if need be -  and seeing the case through to conviction. That objective will be best accomplished with diligent, nose-to-the-grindstone investigative work, not by preening in front of television cameras. In other words, the best of criminal investigation has the boring quality of a Test match, where technical prowess counts for more than flashiness. The Delhi Police would do well not to approach it with the flamboyance characteristic of a T20 match.