India’s top law enforcement official is in serious hot water following a slip of the tongue that saw him make an unfortunate analogy between sports betting and rape. Ranjit Sinha (pictured), director of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), was speaking Tuesday at an Ethics and Integrity in Sports panel session organized by the CBI to examine how best to deal with the fixing scandals that have plagued Indian Premier League cricket matches. As an audience of public officials, sportsmen and betting enthusiasts looked on, Sinha suggested betting was virtually impossible to eradicate and so the government should get some benefit from the activity by legalizing and taxing it.
Sinha’s heart may have been in the right place, but his foot was firmly lodged in his mouth, as evidenced by his full statement. “There are lotteries in states. If we can have casinos in tourist resorts and if the government can declare schemes for voluntary disclosure of black money, what is the harm in legalizing betting… if you can’t enforce it, it is like if you can’t prevent rape, enjoy it. It is better to legalize it and earn some revenue rather than throwing your hands up and letting things happen as it were.”
Sinha’s comments are all the more unfortunate given the brutal Dec. 2012 gang-rape on a New Delhi bus in which the victim, Jyoti Singh, later died of her injuries, shining a spotlight on the country’s lax handling of cases involving sexual violence against women. Social activists were quick to condemn Sinha’s comments, but Sinha was unrepentant, telling the Hindustan Times that he “just used a proverb” to make a point that “you can make a law but there are already so many and it is difficult to enforce.” Clearly unaware of the ‘proverb’ to stop digging once you’re in a hole, Sinha said his critics were “hitting below the belt” and engaging in “malicious propaganda” to smear his good name.
Sinha’s verbal brain-cramp overshadowed the positive attitude taken towards legal sports betting voiced by other panelists, including former India cricket captain Rahul Dravid, who said if law enforcement officials believed legal betting would reduce corruption in the sport “then I am all for it.” A contrarian view was taken by Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) anti-corruption chief Ravi Sawani, who noted that cricket wagers placed legally in the UK with betting exchange Betfair were a drop in the ocean compared to the volume of bets placed with India’s unlicensed bookies.
Sinha’s call for legalized sports bets is the latest in a long line of advocates for changing India’s antiquated betting laws, including the Hindu Center for Politics and Public Policy and the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry. In May, rumors spread that the government was crafting new regulations to bring sports betting in from the cold, but these were subsequently denied by Minister of Sport Jitendra Singh.
