Boria Majumdar banned for 2 years; BCCI conveys decision about journalist to state associations

Mumbai, May 4: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) on Wednesday (May 4) has banned journalist Boria Majumdar for 2 years after he intimidated wicketkeeper batsman Wriddhiman Saha to give an interview.

The call to ban Boria Majumdar was taken at the BCCI Apex Council Meeting a couple of weeks back and now it has been officially conveyed to the state associations via a letter.

"As you may be aware, Mr Wriddhiman Saha had shared screenshots of messages sent by a journalist on social media platform, Twitter, wherein he stated that he felt bullied by the conduct of the said journalist. Mr Saha in the hearing named Mr Boria Majumdar as the journalist," Hemang Amin, CEO and COO of the IPL, wrote in a email to the members of the BCCI.

"The BCCI had taken cognizance of this incident and deemed it necessary to investigate and probe the matter to avoid the recurrence of such instances with other players,” he added.

Boria will also banned from taking interviews of domestic and international cricketers in this period and he will not be granted access inside any state associations or BCCI facilities.

All the floodgates were open when Saha tweeted the screenshots of his chat with a “respected journalist” alleging that the latter was intimidating him to get an interview.

Several former cricketers like Venkatesh Prasad, Irfan Pathan, Virender Sehwag and Harbhajan Singh etc came in support of Saha and asked to take steps against the journalist.

Later the BCCI constituted a three-member panel to investigate the issue and Rajiv Shukla, the BCCI vice-president, Arun Dhumal, the BCCI treasurer, and apex council members Prabhtej Singh Bhatia, had a talk with both Saha and Boria before submitting their report to the BCCI.

The whole incident exploded on social media after Saha tweeted about after he was not picked in the India squad for the home series against Sri Lanka in February.