IPL Spot Fixing Scandal: Gurunath Meiyappan Keeps His Appointment With Mumbai Police!

Gurunath With MS Dhoni

Mumbai Police today rejected Gurunath Meiyappan’s request for an extension to appear for questioning. ‘He has to appear by 5pm today or else he will be declared a fugitive’, said a determined Mumbai Police. Big Money and Big Connections did not work for him this time. Gurunath decided to take a private plane to Mumbai and he arrived in Mumbai this evening, though a little late. At the moment he is being grilled by top cops.

Just before deciding to fly to Mumbai Gurunath reportedly met his father-in-law or the BCCI President or the CSK franchise owner or the Managing Director of India Cements that officially owns CSK. Whatever form of N Srinivasan he met things did indeed start to happen. Betting is illegal in India except for on the racecourses. Even inside a racecourse a steward and his/her relatives are not allowed to bet, because they are endowed with a lot of inside information. Therefore, even if N Srinivasan was interested in drawing a line between betting and match or session or spot fixing he or his relatives are never allowed to bet on matches, because being an insider or franchise owner or franchise official they have access to a lot of information. This creates a situation of conflict of interest even if you consider betting not as an offense. And based on this, his CSK that won the IPL three times and is to play the final this year too runs a high risk of being eliminated from the IPL. So a few things needed to happen!

India Cements disowns Gurunath instantly saying in a statement that he is neither the CSK owner nor CEO nor the Principal, and in actuality only a member of the team management. Poor Gurunath then reportedly changes his net profiles seemingly in an obsessed self-demotion drive. If Mumbai Police finally arrests Gurunath for passing crucial match information to Vindoo Dara Singh who passes it on to the bookies, it would be very interesting to see what N Srinivasan does or what happens to CSK. Maintaining his silence since the conflict of interest N Srinivasan is already under tremendous pressure to resign.

As anticipated, custody of Vindoo Dara Singh gets extended to 28^th May in a local court in Mumbai today. More arrests are likely both by Delhi and Mumbai police. Another bookie was arrested in Hyderabad today.

In the meantime crowds are still thronging the stadiums to watch the last qualifiers and the eliminators before the final. You see, they are cricket freaks, and only genuine cricket lovers are devastated by the fixing eliminators before the grand finale which they fervently expect to be in their interest. Or maybe the hapless crowds did not want to lose the money on their pre-booked tickets. How could they expect to get a refund from a defunct system?