MCA files police complaint against 5 youngsters

Forging of documents to gain admission into domestic cricket teams has been found to be on the rise. In a recent occurrence of such fraudulence, the Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) has taken a strong step and filed police complaints against 5 players. All the 5 young players reportedly, forged their identity documents in order to be part of teams under the MCA.

This is probably the strongest step taken by the cricketing association to counter the alarming fraud of forged documentation. Criminal complaints have been lodged against Soham Panwalkar, Mohammad Faiz Rathod, Amey Chemburkar, Govind Yadav and Altamash Khan. Plagued by this counterfeiting problem, MCA has decided to put its foot down and the decision of the same was taken at the MCA’s Annual General Meeting (AGM) last month.

A statement issued by the MCA on Tuesday said, “The association is continuing on the path of investigating different cases of players registered with suspicious documents and will proceed with lodging police complaints against the guilty players.” The complaint was lodged at the Marine Drive police station.

Norms of the MCA

As quoted by Cricbuzz, according to the MCA’s guidelines, a cricketer who wishes to represent Mumbai in state level tournaments or otherwise, must register with the association first. Further, a player seeking registration must be a genuine resident of the area under the jurisdiction of MCA, namely Mumbai and Thane districts (extending upto Palghar district in the western suburbs, Badlapur in the central suburbs and Navi Mumbai upto and including Kharghar).

MCA puts the foot down

However, it was found earlier this year, that several of the aspiring cricketers had forged their birth certificates in order to gain entry to teams of lesser age groups. These forged documents were detected as they did not tally with other necessary identification documents, like the school leaving certificates. In the effect of this, MCA had banned 16 overage players across different age groups including U-14, U-16, U-19 and U-23 from participating in summer camps across the city.

Currently, the legal committee of the board is formulating and finalizing the necessary course of action to be undertaken in such cases where players are guilty of submitting forged documents. They have also issued a warning for other players to refrain from committing such crimes. By taking this step to ensue legal action, the board has put forward a much needed strong message and also set precedent as to what might happen to players, if they indulge in some fraudulence in future.

– Written by Rituparna Das