Subhrajit Mukherjee, an ardent Mohun Bagan fan tried to meet Mr. Kushal Das in person and hand over a letter of protest to him. However, Mr. Das was unavailable. mohunbaganclub.com shares the letter for kind attention of all football lovers.

To, Date- 14th May, 2013

The Secretary,

All India Football Federation,

 

Dear Sir,

This is to bring to your notice, an incident that took place in the match between Churchill Brothers and Mohun Bagan Athletic Club at Tilak Maidan on 7th May, 2013. We find that as football fans, while it is our duty to congratulate the Churchill Brothers football team on their 2nd I-league title, it is also our responsibility to voice our anger at how our (Mohun Bagan Athletic Club’s) supporters were treated during the match.

Gourav Roy and Deepanjan Mullick traveled all the way from Bengaluru to Vasco to watch our beloved team in action. The duo went inside the ground with the team and since there’s generally no separate stands for supporters of the visiting team they sat behind the Mohun Bagan reserve bench. They had a huge green and maroon flag with them with Mohun Bagan Club’s symbol, National Club of India and Mariners@Bangalore printed on it. According to the instruction they tied the flag to the railing of the stand and also tied the lower ends to the dressing room windows. It might be noted that no one, other than the organizers have access to this area. Suddenly a few organizers untied the flag from the windows of the dressing room and we saw the flag being pulled up towards the stand. They ran towards them and protested but only got abuses hurled at them in return. When they requested the organizers that they should at least return the flag they were threatened that they would get thrown out of the stadium.

Arindam Bhattacharyaa who played in Churchill Brothers last season and team manager Sanjoy Ghosh intervened and they were allowed to sit with the reserve bench players only after they took off our club jerseys. As soon as Sabeeth scored, 3-4 of the match organizers came near us and started abusing us. After Churchill equalized Karim Bencherifa got hit by a bottle of water and got hurt. Gourav and Deepanjan left right at the time the added minutes were announced due to security reasons.

We can understand that Churchill Brothers wanted to cover the entire stadium with small flags and felt a bit insecure and intimidated upon seeing our 15 feet by 6 feet flag. Even Alemao Churchill, the patron saint of Churchill Brothers Club, noticed our flag and pointed towards it. We don’t whether the flag was taken down and stolen on his instructions or not, but this behaviour is unbecoming of any self-respecting football club.

I am just humbly asking you, Mr. Secretary, that how can the organizers of an I-league match go scot free after doing something which is so manifestly unfair? Let the AIFF then tell the football clubs outside Goa to request their fans around the country not to travel to Goa to shout for their favourite clubs, because our supporters had similar experiences in the Sporting Clube de Goa match. Gourav had intimated the vice-president of AIFF Mr. Subrata Dutta about his concerns, but that apparently has fallen on deaf ears.

I am sure that football in India will thrive like this under the able guardianship of AIFF.

Thanking you,

 

(Subhrajit Mukherjee)

Source : As posted in Facebook : http://tinyurl.com/c4cahtb

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