Cheating cases filed against Dhoni's ex-business partners in Gujarat & TN

Ranchi, Jan 11 (IANS) The troubles for Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Vishwas, the directors of Aarka Sports and Management Limited, and former business partners of cricketer Mahendra Singh Dhoni, are likely to increase further after cases of cheating were registered against them in Gujarat and Tamil Nadu.

The allegation against the two officials of Aarka Sports is that despite the contract being cancelled by Dhoni, they continued to open sports academies in Dhoni's name at several places across the country and extorted huge amount of money.

Mihir has been a former Ranji player and has also played with Dhoni.

According to the complaint lodged by a company M.R. Enterprises in Ahmedabad, in the year 2020, Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Vishwas contacted them and told that Dhoni wanted to start cricket academies in different parts of the country. They have also been given the right to run it for 10 years.

Encouraged by Mihir's words, the said company paid him Rs 45 lakh as license fee for 10 years to open a cricket academy in Gujarat. Apart from this, a royalty of Rs 75,000 per month was also paid on getting the rights to open an academy in Dhoni's name.

According to the agreement, M.R. Enterprises paid Rs 9,25,000 as royalty by October 2022.

It has been said in the complaint that 1.47 lakh crore rupees was spent in the name of preparing the cricket ground and providing other facilities and Rs 3.5 lakh was spent on hospitality, hotel and travelling allowance of the representatives of Arka Sports Management Private Limited.

Till now, a total of Rs 2.11 lakh crore has been spent in the name of establishing and running the cricket academy in Gujarat. Later it was revealed that Dhoni had cancelled the right given to Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Vishwas to open a cricket academy on August 15, 2021 according to which they had no right to take any kind of financial benefit.

Similarly, another FIR has been lodged by Chandrashekhar, the secretary of Sri Shraddha Education Trust of Hosur in Tamil Nadu. As per the FIR, he has accused Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Vishwas of taking Rs 35 lakh in Dhoni's name.

In connection with this case, the Tamil Nadu police had sent summons to Mihir Diwakar asking him to appear. This complaint was filed on January 30, 2022.

Chandrashekhar told the police in his complaint that Mihir had described Arka Sports as Dhoni's authorised company.

Nearly a week ago, Dhoni, through his friend and representative Seemant Lohani, had filed a case in the Ranchi court against Arka Sports Management Private Limited directors Mihir Diwakar and Soumya Vishwas, alleging a fraud to the tune of Rs 15 crore.

It has been said in the complaint that according to the agreement made between the two parties in 2017 for running the cricket academy on Dhoni's behalf, Dhoni was to get franchise fee from Arka Sports and apart from this, a share of the profit was also to be shared.

However, Arka Sports did not comply with these conditions due to which Dhoni suffered massive financial loss.