BCCI marketing committee chief Chetan Desai arrested

The Board of Control for Cricket in India seems to have found itself in another tangle as the chief of the BCCI marketing committee, Chetan Desai along with Goa Cricket Association secretary Vinod Phadke and treasurer Akbar Mulla were arrested by police on Wednesday for an alleged misappropriation of INR 2.87 crore which belonged to the organization. The presence of Chetan Desai in this ill-famed list will definitely not please the apex body.

The inspector of the Economic Offenses Wing of Goa Police, Mr. Shivram Vaingankar told the Times of India, "We have arrested (all) the accused because they were not cooperating with the investigation. There is evidence against them." The trio will now be produced in court on Thursday to ensure a police remand.

It is also reported that besides the Rs 2.87 crore fraud, the police sources also believe the GCA officials to have withdrawn Rs 26 lakhs from other bank accounts using fake identities on the pretext of paying a non-existent company.

The GCA officials have been booked under section 408 (criminal breach of trust by clerk or servant), 419 (cheating by personation), 463 (forgery), 464 (making false documents), 471 (using as genuine a forged), 420 (cheating), 120B (criminal conspiracy) and other sections of the Indian penal code.

The scam reportedly saw the daylight when former Goa Ranji Trophy vice-captain Hemant Angle told the special bench of Chief Justice of India T S Thakur and F M I Kalifulla that how a bank account was fraudulently opened by allegedly submitting forged documents. The documents reportedly showed Vinod Phadke as GCA president even though the association was then led by Dayanand Narvekar.

"The account was opened in DCB Bank (Panaji branch) and there was a total of 49 withdrawals, all through fictitious names on self-cheques. Only one name was correct: Suryakant Naik, who withdrew Rs 10.25 lakh, and he happens to be a central government employee," said Angle.

Though the senior GCA officials have all along claimed that they didn’t know anything about the bank yet the news broke and it was brought to the Supreme Court's office. Then the GCA secretary Vinod Phadke had filed a police complaint at thePorvorim police station alleging that signatures of their top three officials were forged and a fake bank account was also created.

Meanwhile,the police informed that Desai and Phadke were admitted to the Goa Medical College Hospital after the arrest because of the high blood pressure, reported FirstPost.