Mumbai; Wankhede gates shut on SRK for 5 years

DHNS

Mumbai, 19 May 2012: Maharashtra Cricket Association (MCA) president and Union Minister for Science and Technology Vilasrao Deshmukh on Friday announced that actor Shah Rukh Khan, who is also co-owner of Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) has been barred from entering Mumbai’s Wankhede Stadium for five years.

On Wednesday night, an hour after KKR defeated Mumbai Indians, an altercation broke out between the actor and MCA security guards and officials leading to a heightened tension in the ground; police officials later at the behest of MCA officials registered a non-cognisable offence, against the actor.

 

The squabble-controversy on Thursday snow-balled into a major ego-tussle between the IPL team owner and MCA officials.

 

The association called an emergency meeting on Friday. After the meeting, Deshmukh informed a press meet that while several managing committee officials during the discussion had demanded life-time ban imposition on the actor. After a lot of deliberation the officials unanimously decided to impose the five-year entry ban on the actor.

 

Deshmukh said: “The decision is to send a message that this is not how one should behave. The rules apply to all, no one is above them...and since this property belongs to the MCA, we have decided the ban.”

 

To a query as to why no committee was instituted to look into the matter, Deshmukh answered: “Over 50 per cent of MCA officials were present at the time of brawl so there was no point in forming an interim committee to look into the incident. As for his allegation that his daughter was pushed, we have not received any complaint from him. If we had received we would have certainly looked into it but instead. He is unapologetic and is going around justifying his actions.”

 

After news channels on Thursday bayed for actor’s blood, an unpeturbed Bollywood ‘Badshah’ called a press conference and demanded an apology from the MCA.
Dismissing the MCA version, Khan said that he did “what any father would do if someone misbehaves with a child.”

 

Rubbishing the allegation that he was drunk at the time of outburst on the ground, said that he was being bullied and “I got very angry when they pushed little girls. Manhandling kids is not pardonable. Their behaviour was completely rude. I will not deny the fact that I was not abusive.

 

“They should apologise to me. They were abusive. They shouldn’t have spoken to me like that. They manhandled children in the name of security....”

 

Interestingly, though the actor denied intake of alcohol, Assistant Commissioner of Police (Zone-1) Iqbal Shaikh, on Thursday, while recounting the mid-night scrimmage where he acted as peace-maker, said: “ His breath did smell of drink when I reached the spot late in night.