Supreme Court sticks to its stand on not naming players

The Supreme Court has stuck to its decision to not allow the naming of players mentioned in the Mudgal Committee report. Its observation came up following an argument made by Cricket Association of Bihar (CAB) counsel Nalini Chidambaran asking for the names of the players mentioned in the report to be released.

Chidambaram's argument was that without knowing the names of Individual No. 2 and Individual No. 3 mentioned in the Mudgal Committee final report, it would not be possible for an argument to be made in the case pertaining to the findings against Gurunath Meiyappan (Individual No. 1) and N Srinivasan (Individual No. 13).

She asked for court to name the teams and the individuals and said, "We would like to know who is the individual." The two judges, TS Thakur and FM Kalifullah, then went into discussion and returned to say they would not like to reveal the names of the individual players as it would go against their own order given on November 15.

Chidambaram then said, "Assuming Individual No. 2 is Mr [MS] Dhoni," at which point one of the judges said, "assume and argue."

Chidambaram then went on to say, "Supposing Individual No. 2 is a member of CSK then we have to know what were the findings about his dealing with Mr Meiyappan." At this point CA Sundaram, representing BCCI, said the board had asked for the names not to be revealed, "this is the kind of speculation we want to avoid."

Justice Thakur said the names of the players would not be revealed but said that given the Mudgal Committee had reported about Individual No. 2 being "in regular touch" with Gurunath, the counsel could argue using that regular association.

The judge also dismissed the appeal by the CAB lawyers protesting against Srinivasan attending the working committee meeting in his role as the TNCA president. He said, "you are trying to widen and open up the issue."