Black marketing of World Cup tickets: Kolkata Police summons CAB officials

Kolkata: The Kolkata Police on Friday summoned the Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) officials following a complaint alleging the black marketing of tickets for the ODI World Cup 2023.

The complaint made by an individual is against the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Association of Bengal and BookMyShow which allegedly promoted the black marketing of tickets.

The CAB officials have been asked to appear within 24 hours at Maidan Police Station.

Initially, the news had spread that Snehasish Ganguly, the current CAB president and the elder brother of former Indian cricket team captain Saurav Ganguly, have been specifically summoned at the Maidan Police Station in the matter. However, later a senior official of the city police asked any senior official of CAB, which included Ganguly, to face questioning in the matter.

He said that since CAB has been issued a notice in the matter and forwarded a set of queries, and that any top official of CAB can appear at Maidan Police Station to answer those queries.

Sources said that the investigating sleuths basically have two questions to the CAB officials on this count. The first question is whether they got any prior information about the black-marketing of tickets. The second question is if they received any early caution on this count, why did they not approach the law enforcement agencies with that information.

It is learnt that till date the police have arrested 16 persons in this connection and a total of 94 tickets have been seized from their possession. Seven FIRs have been filed in the matter at two police stations.

The matter of ticket black-marketing first surfaced after the city cops on November 1 evening arrested an individual red-handed while trying to sell tickets for the India-South Africa match scheduled on November 5. Later an individual filed a complaint with the city police accusing BCCI, CAB and BookMyShow of promoting black marketing of tickets for the ODI World Cup 2023.