IPL fixing-betting scandal: Life ban on Ajit Chandila over after BCCI ombudsman reduces it to seven years

News

• Former Rajasthan Royals spinner Ajit Chandila's life ban in 2013 IPL match-fixing scandal is now over
• The BCCI ombudsman reduced his life ban to seven years
• Chandila was banned for life by BCCI along with the likes of S Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan

Former Haryana and Rajasthan Royals off-spinner Ajit Chandila’s life ban in a 10-year-old match-fixing case is over. The BCCI ombudsman reduced it to seven years, relying on a similar modification of the life bans on former India speedster S Sreesanth and spinner Ankeet Chavan.

Chandila, 39, was banned for his alleged role in a match-fixing scandal during the 2013 Indian Premier League (IPL). He had applied to the ombudsman for reducing the ban after getting a favourable order from the Bombay High Court.

Employed as a customer service supervisor with Air India, Chandila is relieved and looking forward to a return to competitive cricket.

“I can’t tell you how happy I am. My family and I have suffered a lot in all these years for no fault of mine. It was destined to happen. But God was with me. People who were close to me became indifferent after I was implicated in the fixing case. But I have no regrets. We all leave this world empty handed,” Chandila told News9Live on Monday.

“Some negativity had crept into my life due to this allegation, but I don’t want to remember that time. I am trying to convince myself that these 10 years were never part of my life. After the BCCI ombudsman reduced the ban to seven years, I called up Sreesanth and others, who were happy for me,” said Chandila.

The Delhi Police had alleged that Chandila accepted Rs 25 lakh from a “major bookie” but “returned” Rs 20 lakh when he couldn’t underperform as promised and said he would return Rs 5 lakh later. But the police failed to establish this allegation in a local Delhi court.

“They had wrongly accused me. The Rs 20 lakh that the police had confiscated was in fact the money of my father’s elder sister, who had received it from the sale of a plot of land. If it was indeed the money I had accepted from a bookie, why did the police return the money to her a month after a Delhi court discharged me from the case?” asked Chandila.

Chandila thanked BCCI ombudsman Vineet Saran, a former Supreme Court judge, before whom he appeared with his lawyers.

Chandila, who has a 12-year-old son and 17-year-old daughter, is set to play his first competitive match for his employers who stood by him while he was fighting to prove his innocence. “I didn’t go to office for some time until I was exonerated by a court of law. After the court discharged me, I started attending office again,” he said.

Ban on all accused players over

Besides Chandila, the disciplinary committee of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) had also banned Sreesanth and Mumbai left-arm spinner Ankeet Chavan for life for their roles in the 2013 IPL betting-fixing scandal. While Sreesanth and Chavan were banned on September 13, 2013 — along with Amit Singh (five years) and Gujarat-Saurashtra pacer Siddharth Trivedi (one year), the BCCI announced a life ban on Chandila and five-year ban on Mumbai left-handed batsman Hiken Shah, who had made an “illegal approach” to a player ahead of 2015 IPL, on January 18, 2016.

Chandila had filed an application with the then-BCCI ombudsman, Justice (retd) DK Jain, for relief on November 4, 2019. But when there was no response from the ombudsman, Chandila moved the Bombay High Court, which on July 22, 2022, ordered the BCCI to decide on the cricketer’s application within three months.

The BCCI took longer than that as no ombudsman was appointed for some time. Eventually, on February 10, 2023, the new ombudsman, Justice Vineet Saran, pronounced the order reducing Chandila’s ban.

Although the BCCI has still not published Saran’s order on its website, News9Live has accessed the 12-page document.

“I am convinced that the mitigating circumstances as enumerated in Article 6.1.2.2, Article 6.1.2.4, Article 6.1.2.5 and Article 6.1.2.6 [of BCCI Code of Conduct] are attracted in the instant case, making the applicant eligible for the same relief as has been granted to Mr. Sreesanth and Mr. Ankeet Chavan,” Saran wrote in his order.

“Thus, I am of the opinion that it would be in the interest of justice to restrict the lifetime ban imposed on the applicant from participating in any kind of commercial cricket or from associating with any activity of the BCCI or its affiliates, to a period of seven (7) years from 18.01.2016, i.e. the date from which the ban was imposed on the applicant by the BCCI disciplinary committee,” opined the former Chief Justice of the Orissa High Court.

“Accordingly, the applicant’s representation dated 04.11.2019 is accepted and his prayer for granting him parity with Mr. Sreesanth and Mr. Ankeet Chavan is allowed. The life ban imposed on him by the order of the BCCI disciplinary committee dated 18.01.2016 is reduced to a period of seven (7) years from 18.01.2016,” read Saran’s order.

Chandila’s ban was over on January 18, 2023, but he has remained low profile since then. He is ready to play competitive cricket; and if picked, he can feature in the tournaments being organised for retired cricketers.

BCCI politics delays hearings

The hearing in Chandila’s case by the BCCI was delayed due to internal politics of the Board, in the wake of the 2013 IPL scandal. Then-BCCI president N. Srinivasan was himself fighting to survive in the BCCI at that time as his son-in-law Gurunath Meiyappan was also allegedly involved in the 2013 IPL betting scandal and was banned for life by the Supreme Court.

The BCCI president is the chairman of its disciplinary committee. But since Srinivasan could not head the committee after being told by the Supreme Court to keep away from the Board as he was an interested party in the fixing case, no hearing took place, and the quantum of punishment for Chandila couldn’t be finalised. Even after Jagmohan Dalmiya took over as BCCI president, no meeting of the new disciplinary committee was held for a long time.

Delhi court discharges all accused

Another dramatic turn came when a Delhi court in July 2015 exonerated Chandila and 41 other accused of any wrongdoing as the judge rejected the Delhi Police chargesheet. This happened before the new BCCI disciplinary committee, headed by Dalmiya, could meet and decide the quantum of punishment for Chandila.

The Delhi Police had filed a chargesheet against 42 accused persons, including Chandila and Sreesanth, besides gangsters Dawood Ibrahim and Chota Shakeel, and slapped the dreaded Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MACOCA) against them. But Justice Neena Bansal Krishna gave them the clean chit, saying that the court “is constrained to conclude that no prima facie case under MCOCA or any other Penal statute is disclosed against any of the accused persons, who are all entitled to be discharged”. It was a big blow to the Delhi Police.

‘Illegal probe by BCCI’

Counsels Rakesh Kumar, a former cricketer who trained with Chandila in Faridabad, and Lav Dhawan appeared for Chandila before the ombudsman while Abhinav Mukerji and Prakhar Maheshwari represented the BCCI. Chandila was also present during the hearing, wrote Justice Saran in his order.

In July 2015, after receiving the favourable verdict from the Delhi local court, Rakesh Kumar had termed BCCI’s investigation by retired top cop Ravi Sawani “illegal”, citing Article 20 (Protection in respect of conviction for offences) of the Indian Constitution. “Sawani’s probe report was entirely based on the chargesheet filed by the Delhi Police, not on his independent investigation. He examined the players only orally. The process followed was mere eyewash,” he had charged.

“Sreesanth and Ankeet Chavan should have immediately challenged it,” Kumar had said. “We didn’t challenge it because the final report on Chandila hadn’t come. Now, the chargesheet itself has failed to sustain in the local court and all charges have been discarded. Also, the BCCI didn’t give advocates the opportunity to represent Sreesanth, Ankeet Chavan and Chandila.”

Chandila’s woes

Chandila, like Sreesanth, has also served a jail term after the Delhi Police arrested them on May 16, 2013. A week after his arrest, Chandila lost his eldest brother Subhash. “My elder brother was hospitalised the same day I was arrested as he couldn’t bear the impact of the media converging in large numbers at my home and he died a week after that. The sad part is I wasn’t even informed about his death,” says Chandila.

When Chandila was banned, he had played only two first-class matches and taken three wickets – both in his second match – and 12 IPL matches in 2012 and 2013.

Chavan, who has played 18 first-class matches, is now 37, Hiken Shah, who played 37 first-class games, is 38. Trivedi, who was a member of the 2008 IPL-winning Rajasthan Royals team, is 40. He returned to competitive cricket after the one-year ban and represented Saurashtra. He captured 268 wickets in 82 first-class matches.

Chandila was the last of the banned cricketers to get relief in the betting-fixing scandal. The others, including Sreesanth and Chavan, had got their bans reduced by the BCCI ombudsmen following favourable orders from the courts.