The names of Uttarakhand Cricket Association (CAU) secretary Mahim Verma and six others from the state cricket unit have been included in the list. FIR Following a complaint lodged by the father of former Under-19 cricketer Arya Sethi.
According to the FIR lodged on June 20, complainant Virendra Sethi has alleged that his son was threatened with death by Uttarakhand coach Manish Jha, team manager Navneet Mishra and video analyst Piyush Raghuvanshi during the Vijay Hazare tournament last year. .
An FIR has been registered at Dehradun’s Vasant Vihar police station under sections of criminal conspiracy (120B), voluntarily causing hurt (323), extortion (384), and willful insult (504) and criminal intimidation (506).
During a practice session in Rajkot, where the Uttarakhand team was based for the Vijay Hazare Trophy in December last year, coach Jha had abused Arya and hit him too, the FIR said. Things got worse when Arya contacted Verma, the secretary of the state union, and informed him about the incident.
Once he complained to Verma, the FIR states that Arya was called to the coach’s room and threatened with death. Coach Jha, manager Mishra and video analyst Raghuvanshi have been charged with making death threats. According to the FIR, the trio also told Arya that they would hire a hitman.
When the team returned home, Virender went to meet Verma at his residence. However, instead of listening to him patiently, Verma demanded Rs 10 lakh to ensure that Arya’s career at the state level was not hampered, the FIR said. Virendra also alleged in the FIR that Verma had threatened him. The Cricket Association spokesperson Sanjay Gusain and two other employees of the association Satyam Verma and Parul are involved in the FIR lodged at the Vasant Vihar police station in Dehradun.
Vinod Singh Rana, SHO of Vasant Vihar police station in-charge said that the investigation is going on.
“We have registered an FIR and the investigation process is on. We had formed a small team which is probing the matter and also issued notices to the CAU officials but we did not hear anything from them. We are told that two of the seven had moved the court where they were given protection from arrest. Instead the police can interrogate them. But we have not received the court order in this regard.
CAU Secretary Verma did not respond to calls or text messages.
Recently, during a session in the Vidhan Sabha, allegations of corruption have been leveled against CAU by independent MLA Umesh Kumar.
MLA Kumar, when contacted by this newspaper on Tuesday, said that the payment of professional fees has increased significantly, although no cricket was being played due to the Kovid epidemic. “During covid, CAU distributed Rs 6.5 crore as professional fees, I want to know to whom did they give this money? The professional fees before March 2020 were around Rs 2.75 crore. Who did lunch and dinner worth Rs 1.27 crore during Kovid? How did they hire cricketing coaches? I had raised it in Uttarakhand Sadan also. I think BCCI should intervene, there is huge corruption going on here,” Kumar said.
The team has been at the receiving end on the field. During the quarter-finals of the Ranji Trophy in Bengaluru, Mumbai beat Uttarakhand by 725 runs, the world record for the highest margin of victory. Uttarakhand was given a target of 794 runs, but scored 114 runs in the first innings and got out for 69 runs in the second innings.