Police Superintendent confirms Dhoni named by bookie

Superintendent of police, G Sampath Kumar, has confirmed that MS Dhoni was named by bookie Utham Jain aka Kitty, along with Gurunath Meiyappan, as part of a deal that involved fixing in the IPL.

Sampath Kumar told the Hindustan Times that “We were investigating a fake passport case when we came across information related to betting. We interrogated a man called Kitty, who talked about Dhoni and Meiyappan.”

According to Hindustan Times, Sampath Kumar had recommended further investigation into Kitty’s claims but was subsequently transferred out of the internal security branch and is now SP, Railways in Thiruchirapally. It is not known whether an investigation was subsequently carried out.

The statement by Kumar corroborates a story by India Today from two days ago that was based on Sampath’s report. According to the report , ““Kitty [the bookie’s alias> spoke of his knowledge about Vikram Agarwal, Gurunath Meiyappan and cricket players MS Dhoni, Suresh Raina and a few others, and another person in Rajasthan (suspected to be one of Jaipur brothers) in match-fixing.”

As the Hindustan Times story makes clear, this means Dhoni is one of the six Indian players that the Mudgal Committee report mentions and therefore is one of the names handed over to the Supreme Court in a sealed envelope. The committee has recommended further investigation into the allegations of all those named in the sealed envelope.

The Mudgal committee chose not to make the names public because they did not want to stain the people concerned with allegations when no investigations were underway. When contacted by Hindustan Times, Justice Mukul Mudgal continued to tout that line.

However, the committee report mentions Sampath Kumar’s investigation and how the report based on it was never presented to them despite assurances from the police that it would be sent. Nilay Dutta, one of the three members of the committee, even went so far as to say there was a cover-up by the Chennai Police to prevent the committee from getting the report.

Now that is apparent Dhoni is one of those names, the big question is whether the Supreme Court will want to open an investigation into India’s cricket captain. Dhoni is not only India’s most successful captain, he is also the country’s biggest sporting star following the retirement of Sachin Tendulkar.

If Dhoni is implicated in a betting or fixing scandal, it would be arguably be bigger than the revelations in the late 1990s that took down then India captain Mohammad Azharuddin (who like Dhoni, was also India’s most successful captain to that point and was beloved by many).

Still, now that Dhoni’s name has surfaced in connection with IPL betting and fixing, a court-ordered investigation is absolutely necessary. If Dhoni is innocent, and he should be given the presumption of innocence, it will put an end to speculation. If not, well the paying public deserves to know the truth. Indian cricket survived the blow that knocked out Azhar. The sport has always been and will always be bigger than any one player. Should it come to that, it will survive the fall of Dhoni too.

Read the full Hindustan Times story here .

Read the full India Today story here .