IPL a platform for money laundering: Former Indian captain

Agencies
January 27, 2018

Kolkata, Jan 27: Former India captain Bishan Singh Bedi today questioned the source of big bucks being spent during the Indian Premier League auction and alleged that the tournament is a platform for "money laundering".

The former left-arm spinner could not have timed his attack on the league with millions spent on day one of the IPL-XI auctions in Bengaluru. "IPL is also responsible for bringing in somebody called Justice Lodha Commission. I have never known anything so cheap going so expensively. People have accused me that I am maligning IPL as I don't get anything out of it. I said see if you can rope me in, you can try."

"Can anyone justify one wicket's price at Rs one crore and Rs 97 lakh for one run. I am not against the money part of it as players deserve to get more money playing for the country than playing for a wretched club. But do we know where all this money is coming from and where it is going? If this is not money laundering I don't know what is," Bedi said on the concluding day of the Kolkata Literary Meet.

"You find a person like Virat who has been retained by 17 crore... He deserves it. But in the same dressing room, there will be a youngster who will fetch Rs 10-15 lakh. Now he will try to catch up with Kohli. Now how does he do it? There are ways and means to do it and there is a platform which encourages you to do it which is match-fixing. IPL is an easy target," he said pointing out the spot-fixing scandal of 2013.

Bedi spoke highly of Nawab Pataudi and also named MS Dhoni as a gentleman on the field who "never swore". "My favourite cricketer was Pataudi. He was the greatest thing that has ever happened to Indian cricket. Besides Pataudi, the other gentleman was Dhoni who never swore on the cricket field. He (Pataudi) was my first captain and all credit to him as I learnt a lot from him. He was the first Indian captain to bring in a fair amount of Indianness in the dressing room. He always used to tell, we are not playing for Maharashtra or Delhi or Bengal. We are playing for India."

In the same vein, he also mentioned about Sourav Ganguly. "He is one of the finest Indian captains we have had and he was also responsible, in many ways, for the culture that prevails today. The golden period of Indian cricket was when Sourav Ganguly was captaining the side. He had at his disposal Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid and Laxman," he concluded.

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News Network
March 29,2020

New Delhi, Mar 29: Former Indian batsman Wasim Jaffer on Sunday picked his all-time IPL team and appointed wicket-keeper batsman MS Dhoni as its captain.

Jaffer's team's feature opener Rohit Sharma, current Indian skipper Virat Kohli, all-rounder Hardik Pandya, spinner R Ashwin, and pacer Jasprit Bumrah as seven domestic players.
While the foreign players spot have been occupied by West Indies' swashbuckling batsman Chris Gayle, all-rounder Andre Russell, Afghanistan's spinner Rashid Khan, and Sri Lanka's veteran pacer Lasith Malinga.
Indian all-rounder Ravindra Jadeja has been picked as 12th man by Jaffer.

Earlier this month, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) decided to postpone the IPL to April 15, 2020, as a precautionary measure against COVID-19 outbreak.
The board also assured that it will work in unison with the Sports Ministry and will adhere to the guidelines issued.

The 13th edition of IPL was scheduled to commence from March 29. 

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Agencies
February 5,2020

New Delhi, Feb 5: Days after a gunman opened fire in Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of anti-CAA movement, YouTuber Gunja Kapoor was detained at the protest site on Wednesday after she was caught covertly filming the protests in a burqa.

Kapoor runs the channel ‘Right Narrative’ on YouTube and her pinned tweet on Twitter says she is followed on the microblogging site by PM Narendra Modi.

According to police, the protesters turned suspicious after Kapoor asked them "too many questions". She was caught by some of the women protesters after they identified her as the popular YouTuber. The incident led to a commotion at Shaheen Bagh, the epicentre of protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a senior police official said.

She was taken to Sarita Vihar police station where her identity was ascertained, police said.

The incident sparked outrage on social media. Many took to Twitter to question why Kapoor was at the protest in disguise. Others expressed concern about her motives at secretly filming the protests.

Meanwhile, praises flew in for the women of Shaheen Bagh who can be seen defending Kapoor from angry protesters after she was caught.

This is not the first time that a right wing social media activist has landed in trouble in Shaheen Bagh where residents and other women and children have been sitting in protest for nearly two months since the passing of the contentious Citizenship Amendment Act 2019 in December last year.

In January, Deepa Sharma had posted videos online about the "traumatic" experience she had when she was allegedly heckled and harassed by Shaheen Bagh protesters. While the woman's claim could never be verified, other pieces of rampant fake news aimed at delegitimising and villainising protesters has taken social media by storm.

From doctored videos of women protesters allegedly accepting they were paid Rs 500 to attend protests to alleged fights over biriyani and anti-India sloganeering, trolls on social media seem to be working overtime to taint the ongoing protests.

The latter, however, show no signs of giving up. In fact, as Delhi nears elections on February 8, protesters have arranged for music performances by eminent artists, including pop celebrity Prateek Kuhad, till February 7.

Sit in protests take place 24x7 with women showing up in thousands to spend the night and sing songs of protest. And with polls around the corner, the protests have become an active part of political discourse with Aam Aadmi Party's Manish Sisodia expressing his support for the protesters at a recent press conference.

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News Network
July 16,2020

New Delhi, Jul 16: With the highest single-day spike of 32,695 cases and 606 deaths reported in the last 24 hours, India's COVID-19 tally on Thursday reached 9,68,876, informed the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Thursday.

The total number of COVID-19 cases includes 3,31,146 active cases, 6,12,815 cured/discharged/migrated and 24,915 deaths.

As per the Ministry, Maharashtra -- the worst-affected state from the infection -- has a total of 2,75,640 COVID-19 cases and 10,928 fatalities. While Tamil Nadu has a tally of 1,51,820 cases and 2,167 deaths due to COVID-19.

Delhi has reported a total of 1,16,993 cases and 3,487 deaths due to COVID-19.

Meanwhile, as per the information provided by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), 1,27,39,490 samples have been tested for COVID-19 till 15th July, of these 3,26,826 samples were tested yesterday.

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