The Board For Control Of Cricket In India (BCCI) has banned journalist Boria Majumdar for threatening wicketkeeper batter Wriddhiman Saha on Wednesday. The incident happened at the time when Saha was dropped from the Indian Test team ahead of the two-match series against Sri Lanka earlier this year. The wicketkeeper batter uploaded the screenshots of the messages on his Twitter account, which showed an unnamed journalist threatening him for an interview, who happened to be Majumdar.
Notably, he didn’t reveal the name of the journalist in the tweet or in any of the interviews he gave after the incident. The 37-year-old player cited that he doesn’t want to ruin the reputation of the journalist. After a while, BCCI decided to speak to the player and had instructed him not to reveal the name of the journalist in public.
Not to forget, even the board officials didn’t name the journalist. In an interesting turn of events, Majumdar released a video from his official Twitter account and had insisted that the Siliguri-born player had tempered with the screenshots.
And now, the board has banned Majumdar for two years as they found him to be guilty for the offense. The board has banned the journalist from interviewing the players contracted under the BCCI and covering the games which are played in India for the next two years.
“The BCCI Committee considered the submissions by both Mr Saha and Mr Majumdar and concluded that the actions by Mr Majumdar were indeed in the nature of threat and intimidation. The BCCI Committee recommended the following sanctions to the Apex Council of BCCI.”
“The Apex Council of BCCI agreed with the recommendations of the BCCI Committee and imposed the following sanctions: i. 2 (two) year ban on getting any accreditation as a member of the press in any of the cricket matches (domestic and international) in India; ii. 2 (two) year ban on getting any interview with any registered players in India; and iii. 2 (two) year ban on access to any of BCCI and members associations owned cricket facilities.â€
