Tamil Nadu government claim IPS officer took bribe to name MS Dhoni

MS Dhoni

The Tamil Nadu government has filed an application with the apex court alleging that suspended IPS officer Sampath Kumar took bribes from bookies to name MS Dhoni in the IPL spot fixing and betting scandal.

The Supreme Court has been asked to take legal proceedings against the inquiry that is to be conducted by a bench headed by Justice AK Patnaik against N.Srinivasan and 12 prominent cricketers whose names had been declared in a sealed envelope by the Justice Mudgal Committee.

The state government discredited the allegation made by Kumar in which he stated that the Chennai police had not conducted proper raids in the IPL betting scandal. The TN government also claims that Kumar was suspended on charges of extortion and demanding bribe from bookies.

“During the course of investigation, six bookies were arrested on the date of registration of this case and based on the confession of the accused efforts were made to arrest other bookies. In view of the role of intervener/applicant in extracting a bribe amount from the accused (bookies) and also for other delinquencies he was suspended by the government. In order to escape from the clutches of law the intervener/applicant has deposed falsely before the probe committee headed by Justice Mudgal,” the TN government said.

The apex court had earlier called Kumar in which he sough a SIT inquiry into the scandal as he believed that the state investigating authority had tried to cover up the scandal. The apex court also set its reservations on forming a probe panel to investigate Srinivasan and the 12 cricketers as BCCI had opposed further investigation by Mudgal Committee.

BCCI had also decided to form a probe committee comprising of Ravi Shastri, JN Patel and RK Raghavan. Supreme Court reserved its order over SIT and CBI to probe in order to uphold the institutional autonomy of the BCCI.

The court is of the belief that it cannot ‘close its eyes’ to the allegations made by its committees and assures that a probe will be conducted to clear the air on the names issued in the sealed envelope as soon as possible.