MS Dhoni takes legal action against fixing allegations

Team India skipper M.S. Dhoni has sent a legal notice to a newspaper which had alleged he had ‘fixed’ a match.

Quoting Sunil Dev, who was manager of the India team on the England tour of 2014, a Hindi daily alleged that the Indian captain had fixed a Test match and had purposely chosen to bat on a wet wicket, in spite of deciding in a team meeting that India would to field first, should the toss be won. India lost the Test match in under three days by an innings and 54 runs.

Reacting to the report, Dhoni’s Delhi-based lawyers C&C Associates have sent a nine-page legal notice. “The said video contains footage of an absolute dubious sting operation of the aforementioned Mr (Sunil) Dev, which in the present circumstances is nothing but a false propaganda initiated by you to defame my client”, the notice says. “In fact the so called Indian cricket official (Sunil Dev) who you have credited to be the source of information has strongly denied the incident.”

Dhoni’s lawyers (Rajneesh Chopra and Pratik Malik) have asked the publishers to issue denials to the report in the next 48-hours or face a legal case against them. “Our client (Dhoni) reserves the right to institute proceedings for the recovery of damages up to Rs 100 crores from you on account of the defamation, mental agony and trauma caused to him due to this by causing loss of his reputation,” the notice said.