Published: May 24, 2013, 10:29 AM (IST)
Edited: May 24, 2013, 10:29 AM (IST)
The front page of DNA newspaper’s exclusive.
Mumbai: May 24, 2013
Ashwin Srinivasan, son of the President of Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), made some startling revelations about Gurunath Meiyappan’s tryst with bookies and opened a can of worms about his family.
“Guru [Meiyappan] had several connections with known bookies from Chennai and Dubai and was regularly in touch with them even before the IPL started,” Ashwin told DNA’s Yogesh Pawar. “What began as a relatively smaller side-business became a full-fledged one over the years,” he added.
He also said that Meiyappan was steadily increasing his grip over his father N Srinivasan’s business.
“He has been steadily increasing his foothold over my father’s business. Publicly, his wife and my sister Rupa is an executive director in India Cements, my father’s company, and Guru has agreed to merely remain the head of Chennai Super Kings.”
Ashwin also spoke about his father’s dubious decision to buy a small aircraft when he could own a bigger one.
“On all his trips, to and from anywhere abroad, isn’t it strange that the mighty N Srinivasan has to waste four hours in Dubai every time while his aircraft refuels? And mind you, the fuel halt will not be at Kuwait, Sharjah or anywhere else. Who are these regular golf partners he plays with on these halts?” According to Ashwin, Srinivasan has the wherewithal to buy a bigger aircraft, but still chose to invest in one which requires a fuelling halt “for convenient reasons,” he said.
Ashwin went on to say that Meiyappan is trying to widen the gap between him and his parents. A year ago, Ashwin accused his father of homophobia when he and his partner Avi Mukherjee were picked up by the police in a restaurant in Bandra and beaten up.
Ashwin continued his attack on Meiyappan and said, ” He keeps raising my drug-addiction problem to tell people how he was pushed into lending a helping hand in my father’s businesses when even he knows that I am more qualified and experienced than him.”
He continued to take potshots at Meiyappan and went on to say that his parents were not happy with their daughter Rupa and Meiyappan’s marriage. “They were livid because he was not a Brahmin, but a Chettiar. My mother, Chitra, threatened to disown Rupa, but my father, who cursed Guru and his family to the skies after gulping down five scotches every evening, had no qualms joining him over golf given the clout of his family-run AVM Group,”
According to him, his parents were in talks with chess champion Viswanathan Anand for marrying Rupa, but she eventually married Guru.
In the end, he said he had nothing against his sister and brother-in-law and said, ” Though Rupa and Guru have not spoken to me since I fell foul with my parents, I feel no rancour against them. But how can I tolerate him maligning me for a drug problem from a decade ago to manipulate my parents?”
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