Far from supporting Tehelka and Manoj Prabhakar’s original claim that Kapil Dev was involved in match-fixing, the CBI seems to have gone out of its way to exonerate the former Indian captain.

Instead, the agency claims that Prabhakar — hailed by Tehelka as the scourge of match-fixing — was actually in league with bookies and accepted money from them. Says Aniruddha Bahal of Tehelka, who first broke the match-fixing story in 1997 in Outlook magazine, “Manoj is responsible for his past and future. That is not our concern.”

Really? Doesn’t Tehelka have any second thoughts about using a man who was allegedly involved in match-fixing himself to throw mud at other players? “We stand by the role he played in carrying out our investigation,” responds Bahal.

The Tehelka position is that the site exposed match-fixing. Now that the CBI has confirmed that match-fixing exists, Tehelka has been vindicated. Says Tehelka’s CEO, Tarun Tejpal, “All the names that the CBI has taken - Mohammed Azharuddin, Ali Irani, etc. - figure in our report. Our case was to expose the match-fixing that has riddled the cricket world.” This may be true, but it leaves out the role of Tehelka’s chosen investigator, Manoj Prabhakar. “We are not responsible for what Manoj did in the past,” says Tejpal. “In the process, if he is indicted, so be it.”

If Tehelka is distancing itself from Prabhakar, then is it still arguing that he told the truth when he said that Kapil Dev had offered him money? “We believe what Manoj says,” says Tejpal. Adds Bahal: “The last word on Kapil has not yet been said. We stand by our story.” And what about the ethics of sending a man whom the CBI calls a fixer into the field with hidden mikes? “There wasn’t anything unethical about it,” argues Tejpal. “It was an investigation like any other.”