Gujarat: Fake 'IPL' organizers planned matches for a year

AHMEDABAD: Never in the history of cricket would a tournament have lasted for more than three months, but the fake 'IPL' of Molipur could have gone on for an entire year had the scam not been busted by Mehsana police this month. The league organizers had leased farmland from a villager for a year for Rs 70,000 to orchestrate the fake matches.
Sources in the police and Molipur village confirmed that though the fake 'IPL' was busted on July 7, the "chief organizer" Shoeb Davda had planned to keep the tournament running for a year as instructed by Efimov, the Russian mastermind.
"When Davda returned from Russia with the plan to organize the fake cricket league, he first located a farm that belonged to one Ghulam Masi. Dawda signed a pact with Masi and got the farm on a one-year lease for Rs 70,000," said a villager of Molipur. The sources said that Davda used to work at a shop that repaired and sold electronic goods.
"In 2020, he had taken a loan to build a cattle shed for 17 buffaloes that he had bought to venture into the dairy business. The plan, however, flopped. He then went to Meerut and later to Delhi where he met the people involved in running a fake cricket league to bait foreign punters," said a source in Molipur. After meeting Efimov and his aides in Moscow - Asif Mohamed from Pakistan and Ashok Chaudhary - he decided to work for them, and organized the fake IPL in Molipur.
"When he returned to Molipur from Moscow, Davda approached Masi and offered a deal he could not refuse. Masi cultivated seasonal crops that fetched him not more than Rs 50,000 and even that depended on the rainfall. But when Davda offered him Rs 70,000 for a year, he gladly accepted it and rented out his farm," the source said. An officer of Mehsana police said the accused wanted to keep running the fake league for as long as they could. "Since Russians did not know much about cricket league, the accused wanted to continue playing the matches for a year," said a police officer. The fake IPL had started in June, three weeks after the real IPL concluded on May 29.