It’s confounding in that a small-time actor, now allegedly a big-time bookie, managed access to the VVIP arena of the MA Chidambaram Stadium, which is usually reserved for franchisee owners, management, players’ relatives, board members and politicians.
But it isn’t impossible to get a pass, especially if one flaunts one’s Bollywood connection and if he is close enough with someone in the franchisee.
“Any one with a pass can come and sit in that enclosure. He could have picked the pass from someone who got it from one of the franchises. Unless we know that the person is an anti-social element beforehand we can do something. We cannot presume things and stop a person from entering the stadium,'' said a franchisee official.
Nonetheless, his presence raises a few eyebrows, more so as he behaved rather intimately with Sakshi Dhoni, as if they knew each other before. It would have been just another frame — people were least bothered about the stranger who sat alongside Sakshi — had Vindu Dara Singh not been detained by Mumbai Police for his alleged involvement in the spot-fixing.
Some sources alleged that Vindu knew Sakshi through a common friend and that's how he had accessed the stand. Possible.
But more mortifying is that when the police traced out his call list, he has been in constant touch with a Chennai number, which reportedly is registered under Chennai Super Kings CEO and team principal Gurunath Meiyappan’s name.
Singh even confessed that he had spoken to Meiyappan, though the details of his conversation with Meiyappan is undisclosed.