The BCCI has imposed a two-year ban on journalist Boria Majumdar for "bullying" senior wicket-keeper Wriddhiman Saha and barred him from interviewing registered players and entering cricket stadiums in the country. Boria is also barred from seeking access to any of BCCI and members associations owned cricket facilities.
In February, Saha (37), who had been dropped from the Indian team for the Test series against Sri Lanka, had taken to twitter to publish a screenshot of messages that a "respected" journalist had sent him on WhatsApp.
The screenshot had the unnamed journalist telling the cricketer "to do an interview with me", to which Saha did not respond. The messages eventually became shrill in tone: "You did not call. Never again will I interview you. I don't take insults kindly. And I will remember this. This wasn't something you should have done."
Apparently, the journalist had taken offense at the wicketkeeper-batter for ignoring his calls for an interview. The issue escalated after former players like Ravi Shastri, Parthiv Patel, Harbhajan Singh and Virender Sehwag, among others, joined in the criticism of the journalist.
With the matter being hotly debated in social media, the cricket board decided to get to the bottom of it and constituted a three-member committee to determine whether the messages sent by Majumdar were “in the nature of threat and intimidation."
While Saha had initially refused to name the journalist, he later identified the scribe as Majumdar while deposing before the 3-member committee comprising BCCI vice president Rajeev Shukla, board treasurer Arun Singh Dhumal and board councillor Prabhtej Singh Bhatia.
Majumdar had then told a daily newspaper that he would file a defamation suit against Saha. “I’m filing a defamation case against Wriddhiman Saha. He has doctored, tampered and manipulated the screenshots. I have sent to the BCCI all the details and emailed everybody in the BCCI the entire sequence of events. I have also tweeted my side of the story,” Majumdar had said.
I his statement to the BCCI, Majumdar had claimed that Saha’s manager visited his residence on February 1 and set up “two interviews as a brand building exercise”. The cricketer had “confirmed an interview over Zoom”, it was further claimed. As per Majumdar’s statement, the context of the screenshot texts was “the disappointment over failure of Saha to comply with his professional commitment and hence was an expression of dismay by Mr. Majumdar”. The journalist had denied making any threats or hinting at any hostile action.
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