Supreme Court pulls up IPL COO Sunder Raman for ignoring betting charges

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Monday hauled up IPL chief operating officer Sunder Raman for what it called ignoring allegations of betting and spot-fixing when he was in charge of conducting the cricket tournament.

The court also said it would consider a petition challenging the cricket board’s byelaws allowing office bearers to hold IPL teams, ignoring the conflict of interest involved therein.

“The only thing you were doing was taking care of VIPs, babus and their comforts. You did not think fit to enquire into such serious allegations,” Justice FMI Kalifulla of the two-judge bench hearing the IPL betting case said, referring to Raman. “You were just a silent spectator, watching the fun.”

The allusion was to telephone calls between Raman and Vindoo Dara Singh, who was indicted by the Mudgal committee as a “contact of the bookies” in its report on spotfixing and betting.

Raman, through his lawyer V Giri, said he was not aware of Vindoo Dara Singh’s connection with bookies and knew him as a TV celebrity. He said the International Cricket Council’s anti-corruption unit chief, YP Singh, had drawn his attention to some betting allegations, but those seemed to be based on “hearsay” and were not “actionable”.

The lawyer sought discharge of Raman from the court proceedings and dropping of his name from the Mudgal probe report, on the ground that he was a mere contractual employee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India.

The bench comprising Justices Kalifulla and TS Thakur asked Raman whether he had explained to the Mudgal committee why he was in touch with Vindoo Dara Singh.

Giri said Raman had explained it. Justice Thakur then sought to know if he had done anything about allegations of betting by Gurunath Meiyappan and Raj Kundra, linked to the Chennai Super Kings and Rajasthan Royals teams, respectively.

The IPL COO insisted that it was the ICC official, the person who was supposed to act against betting and match-fixing, who drew his attention to the allegations. “Singh had concluded that it was not actionable material,” the lawyer said.

The bench heard for a short while arguments from Rajeev Dhavan for the Punjab Cricket Association and activist lawyer Rahul Mehra, who has raised allegations against BCCI working president Shivlal Yadav. It will continue hearing the arguments on Tuesday.

It will also hear a fresh plea against a change in BCCI rules to end zonebased selection of board presidents. According to the allegation, the change has been made to allow sidelined BCCI President N Srinivasan to contest for the top post again.