Boria Majumdar banned for two years for intimidating Wriddhiman Saha, won't get BCCI accreditation

He will also be banned from getting interviews with international or domestic players for two years and won't be allowed access in any state association or BCCI facilities.

File photos: Boria Majumdar and Wriddhiman Saha

The BCCI has banned journalist Boria Majumdar for two years for intimidating cricketer Wriddhiman Saha. The decision was taken at the Board's apex council meeting a couple of weeks ago.

On Tuesday, the BCCI interim CEO Hemang Amin wrote to the state associations stating Majumdar will be banned for two years from getting accreditation for any domestic or international matches.

"As you may be aware, Mr Wriddhiman Saha had shared screenshots of messages sent by a journalist on social media platform, Twitter , wherein he stated that he felt bullied by the conduct of the said journalist. Mr Saha in the hearing named Mr Boria Majumdar as the journalist," Amin wrote in his email to the members of the Board.

"The BCCI had taken cognizance of this incident and deemed it necessary to investigate and probe the matter to avoid the recurrence of such instances with other players..."

He will also be banned from getting interviews with international or domestic players for two years and won't be allowed inside any state association or BCCI facilities.

On February 19, hours after he was left out of the Indian team for the home series against Sri Lanka, Saha put out screenshots on Twitter alleging that a ‘respected’ journalist was intimidating him to grant an interview.

That took the cricketing fraternity by storm with several former cricketers like Virender Sehwag, Harbhajan Singh, Venkatesh Prasad, Irfan Pathan backing Saha, and requesting him to reveal the identity of the journalist.

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However, Saha later put out a tweet saying he wouldn’t reveal the name as he does not want to harm the journalist’s career. Saha being a centrally contracted cricketer, the BCCI constituted a three-member committee in February to investigate the matter.

The three member panel - comprising BCCI vice-president Rajiv Shukla, treasurer Arun Singh Dhumal and apex council member Prabhtej Singh Bhatia - spoke to Saha and the journalist before submitting its report to the apex council for further deliberation.

A sports historian, Majumdar was previously associated with a national television network and now runs his own channel on YouTube .