World | India
India cricket fans charged for racial taunts
The fans, which included one woman, were charged with harassment and misbehavior and released after a paying a 1,200-rupee bail.
- Agencies
- Published: 12:46 October 18, 2007
- Image Credit: AP
- Australia's Andrew Symonds scoring a century during the sixth one day international cricket match against India in Nagpur in western India.
Mumbai: Four Indian cricket fans will face court for allegedly racially taunting Australian cricketer Andrew Symonds by making monkey gestures, a police official said Thursday.
The four spectators were evicted from the one-day international match in Mumbai on Wednesday after cricket officials showed to police photographs of them making the gestures as Symonds — of Caribbean origin — came to bat, police officer Sunil Zende said.
The fans, which included one woman, were charged with harassment and misbehavior and released after a paying a 1,200-rupee bail. They will have to appear in court later to face charges, Zende said.
Indian and Australian cricket officials issued a joint statement condemning racial taunts.
"There is no place for racism in cricket either on or off the field," said the statement by Sharad Pawar, India's top cricket official, and Creagh O'Connor, his Australian counterpart. "All cricket nations have to be on guard to ensure that the fun does not cross the boundary into unacceptable behavior."
Australian players said fans in western India also made monkey noises targeted at Symonds last week, but Indian cricket officials dismissed those allegations.
"It was difficult to pick out monkey sounds in a noisy cricket stadium," Ratnakar Shetty, an Indian cricket official, told the Indian Express newspaper on Wednesday.
Shetty and other cricket officials suggested Indian fans might have targeted Symonds because of his heated exchanges with Indian bowlers Harbhajan Singh and Shantakumaran Sreesanth.
But during Wednesday's match, the taunts were caught by photographers, said Zende.
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