Meiyappan, who has been charged with a match-fixing scandal in the IPL, will have his fate decided after the Indian Supreme Court’s verdict. PHOTO: AFP
After an extensive probe, the three-member panel also said that allegations of match-fixing against Gurunath Meiyappan during the Indian Premier League (IPL) required further investigations, reported the Press Trust of India (PTI).
The panel, headed by retired judge Mukul Mudgal, suggested that Meiyappan may have passed on information to outsiders for betting during the Twenty20 competition, said the news agency.
Meiyappan was the team principal of Chennai Super Kings, an IPL franchise owned by Srinivasan’s India Cements company and captained by national skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
The court had appointed the panel on October 8 to investigate the scandal that rocked the popular tournament run by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) last year.
The probe was separate from investigations by police, who have filed charges in court against a string of officials, players and bookmakers for illegal betting during the tournament.
Meiyappan has been charged by Mumbai police with forgery, cheating, criminal conspiracy, breach of contract and handing critical team information to alleged bookmakers.
Court to take up report on March 7
The panel spent four months interacting with players, IPL team owners, the police, journalists, anti-corruption unit personnel and various other stakeholders.
Its report, running into 170 pages and more than 4,000 pages of annexes, was handed to Supreme Court judges Ananga Kumar Patnaik and Jagdish Singh Khehar on Monday.
The court will take up the report on March 7.
The revelations come just days after Srinivasan was chosen as the first chairman of the International Cricket Council in a controversial shake-up of the governance and structure of cricket’s world body.
Allegations of betting and spot-fixing against another IPL franchise owner, Rajasthan Royals’ Raj Kundra also needed to be further investigated, PTI quoted the report as saying.
BCCI vice-president and chief spokesman Rajiv Shukla said the board would take further action only after the Supreme Court gave its verdict.
“This is a panel report, let us wait to see what the Supreme Court rules,” he said. “I have no further comments to make.”
Published in The Express Tribune, February 11th, 2014.
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