Newsmaker: Gurunath Meiyappan

Not a mere spectator?

If it wasn't for the Indian Premier League, perhaps Gurunath Meiyappan would have remained the little known scion of a film producer's dynasty. But married into the family of N Srinivasan, president of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and managing director of India Cements, which owns the Chennai Super Kings franchise, Meiyappan couldn't escape being part of the game. However, as events have turned out, the 39-year-old apparently wasn't a mere spectator in the cricket stadium.

The Justice Mukul Mudgal Committee, set up by the Supreme Court to probe allegations of betting in the Chennai and Rajasthan franchises of IPL, has charged Meiyappan with involvement in betting and providing insider information to bookies during the 2013 edition of the T20 tournament. The Mudgal panel considered the information provided by police in Delhi and Mumbai as well as the first information report and chargesheet filed by the Mumbai police that exposed the roles of players like S Sreesanth and others in the spot-fixing and betting scandal. The committee went through the transcripts of telephonic conversations between bookies and bettors, Meiyappan allegedly being among them, and held that in the event of the tapes under probe being found genuine, "there can be no iota of doubt that Gurunath Meiyappan was indulging in betting in IPL matches".

If indeed such is the case, Meiyappan has put his father-in-law and his company in deep trouble. The Mudgal panel reiterates, against all CSK protestations, that Meiyappan was indeed a team official in the franchise. After Meiyappan was arrested on May 24, 2013 when his name cropped up during investigations into actor Vindoo Dara Singh's collusion with bookies in IPL betting, CSK and Srinivasan consistently maintained that Meiyappan had nothing do with the team management and, therefore, did not have access to team information. In effect, the Mudgal panel's report means both that Meiyappan is guilty of the cricket version of high-level insider trading as well as exposes CSK to termination as an IPL franchise for having tarnished, as team official, the reputation of IPL and BCCI.

Srinivasan, who defended his son-in-law's indiscretions as those of "a cricket enthusiast", couldn't perhaps have imagined what the future had in store for his family when he married off his daughter, Rupa, to Meiyappan. He was a good match for the Srinivasans as he was a member of the city's high-profile AVM family. Meiyappan's father is AVM Balasubramanian, one of the five sons of A V Meiyappan, who set up the successful AVM Productions, which has produced films and television programmes for over 50 years now.

Meiyappan is popularly called Prince Gurunath for his family background. People who know him say he is a mild-mannered and calm person who can be tough when it comes to taking decisions. And he does need his wits around him because, according to his twitter account, he runs three family companies as their managing director - AVM Productions & Entertainment, AVM Studios and AVM Constructions.

Till now, Meiyappan has largely avoided the glare of the media, unlike his grandfather, father and father-in-law. Besides being a "cricket enthusiast", he has also tried his hand at two other sports-motor racing and golf, in which, as the lack of media reports suggests, he wasn't good enough to catch the eye.