This is from a blogger rather than a news site, and I find ut hard to believe something like this could be completely covered up - anyone in Zim hear any rumblings about this at the time of the tri-series?
Reports reaching from the Zimbabwe government in Harare state, the African nation's government had banned the Sri Lankan star cricketer Tillakaratne Dilshan from entering its country.
The ban has been in active as per an alleged rape case that has taken place during the Sri Lankan cricket team's tour in Zimbabwe, which took place in June 2010. Reports state, Dilshan had raped a 17 year old white girl in an undisclosed location. Dilshan was the captain of the Sri Lankan team for this tour while 22 year old Angelo Mathews was the Vice Captain.
Reports reaching theNEWSmaster state, Dilshan along with Jeevan Mendis and Dilhara Fernando had visited a night club in Zimbabwe where they had forcefully taken the 17 year old to the above undisclosed location. Following this 'abduction' interestingly only Dilshan had raped her.
Police reports of the African nation confirm, DIlshan had also been in custody for about 24 hours where he was released by the authorities as the Sri Lanka Cricket interim Committee had bribed several hierarchical police officers and members of the media. The above two parties had been bribed US $ 13,000 to avoid the 'rape incident' getting exposed.
Meanwhile unofficial reports reaching from the Sri Lankan government state, the Sri Lankan President had been aware of the incident from top to bottom.
It is learnt, Dilshan is accused over several incidents regarding match fixing and several members of the Interim committee too had been chained with these allegations and as a result these unlawful activities are left behind without getting exposed!
I did read about the news in a couple of articles in the last 15 days, although no name was mentioned anywhere.
May well be true, because Dilshan was released of the Vice Captaincy duties after the tour, and it was bizarrely handed back to Mahela. This suddenly starts making sense now.
I actually learnt of it here in the UK through a Sri Lankan friend, who asked me to check Zimbabwean newspapers. Of course I found nothing and I didn't believe it. But there could be something there, it's such a nasty rumour to start about someone no matter who they are.
But on the surface the story doesn't make sense. Why would any government bar a person accused of raping someone in that country from re-entering the country? Shouldn't they be trying to extradite him or hope he comes back on his own to their jurisdiction so the police can arrest him and press charges and so a trial can occur? If they bar him then it means none of that can occur and since obviously the only ones to benefit from such a non-occurrence would be the accused and the officials he supposedly bribed then it must mean he bribed the entire Zimbabwe justice and immigration departments of government. Because if he only bribed a few local cops and immigration authorities and judges didn't receive any bribe why would they go along with a ban?
The motivation at the time seemed to be not to create any sort of fuss around the cricket - sides were reluctant enough to tour without the Zim justice system getting involved. In which case a hush-hush "get out and don't come back" would make perfect sense.
That said, with no other verification of the story, I genuinely doubt it took place.
Neil Johnson, Alistair Campbell, Murray Goodwin, Andy Flower (w), Grant Flower, Dave Houghton, Guy Whittall, Heath Streak (c), Andy Blignaut, Ray Price, Eddo Brandes
