"Whenever Pakistani teams, delegations came to India, they trafficked drugs": Alleges former Home Ministry official R V S Mani

New Delhi [India], July 14 (ANI): Former Under Secretary of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, R V S Mani, alleged that drug trafficking was a recurring practice by Pakistani cricket teams and delegations visiting India.

Mani namedropped Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif, both former cricketers who were banned by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in 2006 after testing positive for the banned substance nandrolone.

Akhtar was banned from cricket for two years, and Asif for one after a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) drugs tribunal found both guilty of using the banned anabolic steroid nandrolone following positive dope tests. Both players tested positive in internal dope tests conducted by the PCB at the end of September 2006. They were subsequently removed from Pakistan’s squad before the team’s opening match against Sri Lanka on October 17 in Jaipur during the Champions Trophy in India.

“We have reported a case of Pakistani cricketers Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif, who were sent back by the Pakistani High Commissioner after self-confessing that they were carrying drugs. That is what the ruse is. So that is the entire background. Whenever Pakistani teams and delegations came to India, they trafficked drugs here,” Mani, who was in the MHA from 2006-2010, told ANI.

“It’s an official policy of Pakistan to push drugs into India. They’re well-known people. They’re high-profile people. So were the other people in the Pakistan team whose names might not have been named, but the entire team consists of that, and they used to do it,” Mani said.

Mani also alleged that former Pakistan coach Bob Woolmer’s death was linked to this as he “resisted” the drug trafficking by Pakistani players. Bob Woolmer, the 58-year-old coach of the Pakistan cricket team, died on March 18, 2007, in Kingston, Jamaica. He was found unconscious in his hotel room hours after Pakistan’s shock defeat to Ireland at the 2007 Cricket World Cup and was later pronounced dead.

He claimed that, according to a Defence Intelligence Agency under the Ministry of Defence estimate from that period (2006), around 30% of funding for terror attacks in India came from the drug trade.

“Their English coach, Bob Woolmer, who resisted this drug trafficking by the Pakistani players, was killed under suspicious circumstances. All the dots have to be joined. And Pakistan delegations do use to bring drugs. And as per the DIA estimate of that time, 30% of the Indian terror attacks’ funding was coming from drugs only,” Mani added. (ANI)

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