The Tamil Nadu Premier League (TNPL), played on the lines of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association's IPL, is in the news these days because of a strange fraud case. Till now, cases of cheating and deceiving young cricketers with false promises of playing in the IPL were coming to light, now a case of a fraud of Rs 6 crore has come to light in the name of making the owner of a team of this league one of the owners of a team of a similar league outside the country.

This team is Salem Spartans. When the ownership rights of Team Tuti Patriots were sold in 2020, the new owners changed the name of the team to Salem Spartans. The new owner is M Selvakumar who is one of the largest distributors of a mobile network in Chennai. According to the records, when the franchise rights were sold for this league in 2016, this was the most expensive team – a bid of Rs 5.21 crore was accepted for it. Champion in 2016 and finalist in 2017, this team's record deteriorated after that and has not been able to come above number 5 in any year. With the new owners, in the 8-team tournament, they were number 7 in 2021 and 2023 and number 8 in 2022. International cricketers Washington Sundar and Vijay Shankar were also in the team in the 2023 season.

Now this team is in the news not for its game but because of the fraud committed against its owner. An FIR was lodged in this case in December last year but due to police action, the matter has come to light now. Robin Bisht was the coach of the team in the 2023 season. He was a famous player in his time and played 106 first class, 61 List A and 38 T20 matches and has been in the Delhi Daredevils team in IPL along with playing for India A. According to the FIR, Robin Bisht and another player of the team, Akash Sumara, introduced team owner Selvakumar to two persons named Nitin Khokhar and R Satish Kumar in January 2023 and told him that they have 27 percent shares of a team of CPL (Caribbean Premier League) being played in the West Indies, out of which they want to sell 25 percent.

Selvakumar got lured by the idea of ​​becoming equal to many IPL team owners by becoming the owner of a team in a state league of India and directly becoming the owner of a team in another country's league and the deal went ahead. Selvakumar believes that he was shown several documents and was told that the current market valuation of this stake is Rs 30 crore. Even then, they were ready to sell these shares to Selvakumar for Rs 22 crore. It was decided that the agreement would be made after making a payment of Rs 6.10 crore. Selvakumar now claims that Bist and Sumra had assured him that they knew both these share sellers, had guaranteed that his investment would be safe and the transaction would happen as per the agreed terms. After all this, Satish and Nitin were given an advance of Rs 10 lakh on 9 February 2023 for 25 percent shares of the team. After giving this, Selvakumar gradually kept putting money in their different accounts through RTGS and the total amount is Rs 6.10 crore. Even after this, when no legal action was taken for the share transfer, Selvakumar got a professional investigation done. He found out that he had been cheated.

As soon as he realised that he had been cheated, he demanded his money back. It is alleged that he was then threatened with death. When he could not find a solution, he went to the police and filed an FIR. Bist's name is also mentioned in this FIR, although he is denying any involvement in this fraud. The interesting thing is that despite this FIR, this year too the team gave Bist a contract for the league. Now, after the police action, they are looking for a way to release Bist from the contract.

The current news is that the Anti-Corruption Unit (ACU) of BCCI has started taking action on this matter on its own and they are preparing guidelines for the team owners of all the leagues across the country so that no one else is subjected to such fraud. The problem is that when any such deal comes to light, in the greed of not letting it slip out of their hands and to prevent the news from leaking, the team owners neither get a proper professional investigation done about it nor do they inform BCCI about it. The interesting thing is that even after all this, the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association says that they have not been told anything about this and that is why they are not taking any action. Some arrests have been made – Bist is not among them.