Police harass BCCI, MCA officials at Wankhede gates

Police high-handedness reached its peak at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday ahead of Mumbai Indians' first home IPL tie against Kochi Tuskers Kerala when BCCI secretary N Srinivasan and CAO, Prof Ratnakar Shetty, along with MCA managing committee member Vinod Deshpande were stopped at the gate of their own premises for 15-20 minutes.

Police high-handedness reached its peak at the Wankhede Stadium on Friday ahead of Mumbai Indians' first home IPL tie against Kochi Tuskers Kerala when BCCI secretary N Srinivasan and CAO, Prof Ratnakar Shetty, along with MCA managing committee member Vinod Deshpande were stopped at the gate of their own premises for 15-20 minutes.

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Srinivasan and Shetty, who had valid vehicle passes, were stopped for 20 minutes at the main entrance of the Cricket Centre, which is also the BCCI headquarters inside the stadium.

The over-zealous police officials did not even bother about proper accreditations and demanded passes from their own authority before letting in legitimate people.

Deshpande, the West Zone media convener of the BCCI, was halted for 15 minutes and had to fight his way into the stadium and then had a busy time running around to let mediapersons inside, who were not with police identities.

The police passes had been issued to some mediapersons and not given to others whose names were not in the list provided to the security authorities.

Mediapersons had to wait for 15 minutes to half-an-hour before they could gain entry on the words of Deshpande.

They have been told to get police passes for future matches, making the accreditations prepared by the IPL a total farce.