Gurbaj Singh decides to go to court after Hockey India refuses to lift ban

New Delhi: Star India midfielder Gurbaj Singh has decided to take his battle with Hockey India (HI) to court after the federation refused to lift the nine-month ban on him on charges of misbehaviour and groupism.

"I have decided to go to court since the charges put on me are completely baseless," he said after an HI committee heard his appeal over the ban but refused to remove or reduce it.

Gurbaj, who has already served a month and a half of the ban will hence not be part of the 2016 Hockey India League (HIL) and FIH Hockey World League (HWL) finals in December this year, which will also seriously jeopardise his chances of returning to the national squad for the Rio Olympics next year.

"All these allegations of misbehaviour and groupism are pre-planned and there is absolutely no truth in that. I have complete faith in the judicial system of my country, and therefore I have decided to take this matter to the court of law," Gurbaj further said.

The allegations against Gurbaj were made in a report submitted after the FIH World League semi-finals in Antwerp, which led to a Harbinder-Singh led committee slapping a nine-month ban on the right-winger.

Gurbaj had an option to appeal, which he did and was given the date of September 18 - a day after the all-important HIL players' auction.

But the committee hearing the appeal, which included HI president Narinder Batra, CEO Elena Norman, Harbinder and RP Singh, was not convinced of Gurbaj's clarification and counter-argument. It hence concluded that there was no ground to remove or reduce the ban.

It is believed that the allegations against Gurbaj were made by former India coach Paul van Ass's assistant Jude Felix, who resigned from the post immediately after the HWL semi-finals in Belgium.

Incidentally, Van Ass too was fired from the job over a heated argument with Batra at the same tournament, which later snowballed into a huge controversy forcing India to replace Van Ass with Roelant Oltmans less than a year into the job. Oltmans is also HI's High Performance Director.