#TFGinterview - Ranjit Bajaj on failed attempts to bribe his players, and match fixing in Indian Football

MINERVA PUNJAB FC ARE at the top of the I-League table, and if they can hold their position till the end of the season, they will make history as the first North Indian club to win the top division league since 1996-97.

But the ride for them has not been smooth, and the rest of the journey is unlikely to be without perils either, whether on the pitch and off it.

But while the team has dealt with threats on the pitch well so far, they were not prepared for what came to them on Tuesday - a criminal attempt to sabotage their campaign from outside.

Ranjit Bajaj, owner of the club, got a call from one of his players, who said he had been contacted by a bookie who offered him money to underperform. The player sent him screenshots of texts and the phone number where it came from. Out of the blue, this incident set up a harrowing ordeal for Bajaj himself and the team over the next 24 hours.

Speaking to TFG, Bajaj recounted the episode, and how he reacted to it, 

"The first call was made to an Indian player in my team. He listened for a bit, then hung up on the guy, blocked him and told me. At 9 pm same day, I gave a call to AIFF Integrity Officer Mr Javed Siraj, but he did not pick up my call. Next day at 9 in the morning I called him again, he asked me to send the screenshots and the WhatsApp number from where the call came and I did all that... then at the evening the second thing happened, through Facebook, with a foreign player. So I used the AFC's Integrity app to make a common complaint, uploaded all the evidence, and then I posted about the matter on social media."

2 of my players came to me with screenshots of match fixing offers of 30 lakhs/I reported it to Aiff integrity officer&also AFC thru their integrity app/really hope these unscrupulous elements are not successful in getting thru2other players and match officials @ILeagueOfficial pic.twitter.com/Hs28ljflvb

— Ranjit Bajaj (@THE_RanjitBajaj) January 17, 2018

Known for his passionate presence in the sideline, Ranjit Bajaj is a young club owner who has gained a reputation for not holding back whenever something upsets him. He has even gotten in trouble for yelling at match officials, and that has not made him change his demeanours. But this threat to his team's historic campaign that's still taking shape was a beast of a different nature. He grew anxious as he explained the scope of such threats,

"See, if somebody like Sony Norde is offered 30 lakhs, he will refuse it. But somebody who makes that same amount in ten seasons, and maybe this is his last season, and maybe his father and mother [are] dying of cancer... whatever reason! And you don't know what kind of foreigners you are bringing in... there are cases where someone who was working as a carpenter in Nigeria comes here and plays as a striker, you know that... and imagine the match officials, they get 10,000 bucks a month. Forget players, it's so much easier to get to the match officials! For them it's not even a career... I don't even know what to do, bro."

We need to be ultra careful now /the cats out of the bag / it has arrived in our country /the curse of horrible people trying to ruin our beautiful game with the immediate lure of easy big money / really hope NO MATCH OFFICIALS or PLAYERS fall in this trap 🙏🏽😢@ILeagueOfficial

— Ranjit Bajaj (@THE_RanjitBajaj) January 17, 2018

Indian football, like domestic football in any other country, has certain protocols in place to prevent such corruptions from taking place. So what's going wrong here? Ranjit explained why Indian footballers can be especially vulnerable to match fixing attempts by bookies,

"It's about player accessibility. I used to be the manager of the Indian senior cricket team and we used to be told that make sure no one gets to them in the hotel, or in the lobby or anywhere, whereas in football you have only 3 hours of control of player accessibility while you are in the stadium. Whether it's ISL or I-League, the guy can easily go up to anbody's room, yaar! There's no bloody procedure... the thing is, [the bookies] have come to know that there's no risk getting involved with footballers and ther reward is the same because you can go to some international betting website and bet on anything. The risk is zero, the reward is the same."

While there is not much a club owner can do to prevent such calls from coming in the first place, Bajaj asserted that he was determined to make sure this matter gets addressed and the culprits are punished,

"I don't want it to become like cricket, where it has to come to a level of Hansie Cronje and Herschelle Gibbs... I don't want it to happen and then it becomes a big deal, it should become a big deal now! Football will die before it starts if this happens... I'm going to go to the police station with the two boys concerned here and lodge an FIR... I'm not letting this go, I live and die for this... I can't let a taint like this come... imagine, no matter what Minerva does now, this thing will always remain in the conversation. And if a referee gives a wrong penalty against us, even if he has done it by mistake, people will not say it's a mistake! People will look at every match, every bloody decision with those eyes! And that's horrible!"

But the most frustrating part of this whole thing, according to him, is the worry about his players, and how to protect them from future contact attempts from bookies,

"I don't know what to do here. Do I take their phones away? Do I lock them in a room? What do I do? I can't do anything! If I do that, players will say, we told you about it immediately and you still don't trust us? The two players who came forward and alerted me deserve a lot of accolades for their integrity!"

For now, though, Ranjit wants to keep the names of the players who were contacted by the bookie private. But he said even that may not be the case if he lodges an FIR,

"I don't want the players' names to come out before the coming few matches, especially the two matches against East Bengal because that's where all the pressure is and I don't want their focus to be off... but I'm sure that when I file an FIR the names will go out somehow. That's what I'm worried about, bro... it can leak from the police's end."

Bajaj asserted repeatedly that he and the whole Minerva Punjab squad are determined to overcome this "sh*tstorm" that's brewing and concentrate on winning the title, but he was concerned that this incident was just the tip of a giant iceberg that lies hidden in Indian football's path,

"Do you understand that it's coming out because I'm reporting this, but it's been going on for long, and nobody's been reporting it, that's what it means?"
 

Get the latest in the world of Sports, Teams, and Players! Free Delivery to your Inbox.