New Delhi, Apr 22 (PTI) The Supreme Court on Tuesday said cricket match fixing has serious financial ramifications on the country’s economy as it offered to go deeper into the 2019 T20 Karnataka Premier League scandal.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh appointed advocate Shivam Singh as amicus curiae to assist it in a plea filed by Karnataka Police against the January 10, 2022 order of the high court.

“We are keen to go deeper into the issue. It has a very serious ramification in the economy. Today, we don’t want to observe anything which would look like we are pre-judging the issue. But this kind of betting has very serious financial ramifications on the economy,” the bench said.

Justice Kant took note of the fact that appeal of Karnataka government was filed in 2022 and has now come before the court after three years.

“Where has this matter disappeared? For three years it was not listed. Tell us who was waiting for my retirement,” the judge said.

The court then directed the matter not to be deleted from the causelist after four weeks and sought an explanation from the registry for not listing the case.

Additional solicitor general K M Nataraj, appearing for the Centre, said match fixing was detrimental to the sports community.

The bench told advocate Singh to assist the court as he was good in sports law and has authored a book on the subject.

“You can assist us in the matter. It is simple 419 IPC or 420 IPC or something more. The state will have their own viewpoint but we want a neutral person like in sports we have an umpire,” Justice Kant said.

The judge recalled a bail matter in which a person was lured to betting and lost everything.

“He has virtually become a beggar and is inside the jail. Whole family is now in crisis. They were leading a good life and now completely destroyed,” the judge shared.

Underlining the “ramifications and implications” the court appointed the amicus curiae and ordered, “Registry is directed to provide him complete records and the counter affidavit filed by UOI.” The top court on September 30, 2022 issued notice on the matter.

On January 10, 2022, the high court said instances of match fixing unearthed by the Bengaluru crime branch police in 2019 during an investigation of corruption involving cricket players and team managements in the Karnataka Premier League T20 tournament did not amount to cheating and quashed the chargesheet filed against three players and a team official in the KPL.

The chargesheet was filed against several accused including former Karnataka cricket captain C M Gautam, two players Abrar Kazi and Amit Mavi, and the owner of the Belagavi Panthers team Asfak Ali Thara. PTI MNL MNL AMK AMK