TN Superintendent of Police: MS Dhoni was aware of the deal between Gurunath and bookie

Gurunath Meiyappan and MS Dhoni

In an interview with Headlines Today, G. Sampath Kumar, former Tamil Nadu Superintendent of Police (Internal Security), said that Gurunath had approached Dhoni and Raina after a bookie’s insistence. He had earlier claimed in an investigative report that Dhoni was aware of the deal between Gurunath and a bookie named Kitty.

“There were reported meetings between Vikram Aggarwal and Meiyappan. Vikram asked Meiyappan to talk to a few CSK players and Meiyappan approached Dhoni and Raina in a party,” Sampath said.

Sampath Kumar is of the opinion that a single party should be responsible for the entire investigation of the case and suggested that the National Investigation Agency (NIA) should take over the investigation of the case.

“I asked for an investigation by an agency like the NIA along with a joint investigation team. I had a feeling that this investigation was not (moving) on the right lines because the very FIR (filed by the Delhi police at the time of arresting Sreesanth and two other cricketers) mentions match-fixing. It’s in the FIR itself but it was not probed properly,” Kumar told the TV channel Headlines Today.

Mail Today has accessed new transcripts of conversations between Gurunath Meiyappan and Vindoo Dara Singh, according to which more than half the matches of IPL 6 were fixed.

“Gurunath and Vindoo are heard discussing placing bets on the match between CSK and RR on May 12, 2013. Gurunath tells Vindoo that CSK will score about 140 and Chennai ended up scoring 141,” the Mail Today report mentions. This was also mentioned in the Justice Mudgal report.

On May 12, 2013, during CSK vs RR, Gurunath placed bets worth 1.4 crores on Rajasthan Royals and told his friend, Vidoo, that CSK would lose the match. A phone conversation recorder at 21:09 reveals that Gurunath urged Vindoo to bet 30 lakhs on Rajasthan Royals, apart from the 20 lakhs that he had already bet. He says: “RR is winning pakka.”

When Kumar came across information relating to the betting, while he was working on a fake passport case, he started asking questions that made some of the top officials jump in their seat and he was immediately transferred to the Railway police in Trichy.

“They wanted me not to probe further on this. My point is that when we in Q branch (the internal security unit) crack down so many things, why haven’t they done that? That’s my question,” said Kumar, who believes he was being framed.

The captain of the Indian and CSK team, MS Dhoni‘s name is also mentioned in the report to the Mudgal inquiry panel.

“The sealed cover contains unverified information that we wanted to share with the court only and contains statements of people who wanted to stay anonymous,” Justice Mudgal said when he was asked about more details on Dhoni.

The next scheduled hearing in the Supreme Court is on 7th March.