RVS Mani, a former Under Secretary of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs, claimed that Pakistani cricket teams and delegations traveling to India frequently engaged in narcotics trafficking.
Shoaib Akhtar and Muhammad Asif, two former cricketers who were banned by the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) in 2006 after testing positive for the illegal drug nandrolone, were mentioned by Mani.
Following positive dope tests, a Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) drugs tribunal ruled both Akhtar and Asif guilty of using the prohibited anabolic steroid nandrolone, resulting in two-year and one-year cricket bans, respectively. At the end of September 2006, the PCB performed internal dope tests, and both players tested positive.
They were later cut off Pakistan’s squad prior to the team’s Champions Trophy opening game against Sri Lanka on October 17 in Jaipur, 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 said that because Bob Woolmer “resisted” the drug trafficking by Pakistani players, his death was connected to this. On March 18, 2007, Bob Woolmer, the 58-year-old coach of Pakistan’s cricket team, passed away in Kingston, Jamaica. Hours after Pakistan’s shocking loss to Ireland in the 2007 Cricket World Cup, he was discovered unresponsive in his hotel room and subsequently declared dead.
He asserted that an estimate from the Defence Intelligence Agency under the Ministry of Defence during that era (2006) stated that the drug trade provided about 30% of the money for terror strikes in India.
“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.
