‘Rohit is out .. Mumbai will lose’: The comment that killed a Kolhapur IPL fan

A woman’s wail pierces the narrow, winding lane at the end of which sit two houses separated only by a thin wall. The front door of one shack is bolted. Inside the adjacent home, a young man – head shaven, eyes moist and legs folded – sits on the floor in silence. In a room, village elders console his weeping mother.

It’s Padwa, the first day of the New Year, but the woman can’t gather herself to forget the past and look forward to a new beginning. Inside her modest home, and on the streets outside, they are still mourning the passing of Bandopant Tibile. The 65-year-old died on March 30 – two days after he was seriously injured in a fight with his neighbour, 70-year-old Balwant Jhanjge, while watching an Indian Premier League (IPL) match on TV from their small Maharashtra village.

Tibile’s son Vijay fights back tears as he says: “They were watching a match. The argument broke out because of an incident in a match. The biggest lesson is to not get too involved emotionally in cricket. When will we treat sport as sport?”

Tibile’s son Vijay (2nd right) with village elders including police patil ragi jadhav (left) and sarpanch Sangram Bhapkar (second left)

It’s a question many have been asking lately.

Since the start of this IPL season, social media has witnessed toxic battles between fans of Hardik Pandya and Rohit Sharma, the new Mumbai Indians captain vs his predecessor. Rivalry between fans of different teams always existed, but animosity between those idolising individual cricketers enjoying cult following is a recent trend in Indian cricket.

In a much-debated transfer, Pandya had moved to MI from Gujarat Titans before the current season. This came within days of the Rohit-led Indian team finishing runners-up in the 2023 ICC World Cup. Pandya was booed during his first home game at Wankhede Stadium, and policemen in civil clothes were posted near the dugout where he sat with his teammates.

It was during MI’s previous game, an away outing in Hyderabad, that the elderly farmer was killed for simply saying ‘Mumbai Indians will lose’. This was the real world, miles away from the glittering IPL stadiums.

The tragedy has stunned Hanmantwadi, a village of a few thousand on the outskirts of Kolhapur, and left its inhabitants speechless. “It’s a modest village with people who are farmers with modest lands and meagre earnings. We are far away from the hustle of big cities. It’s an uncomplicated, peaceful life,” says Sangram Bhapkar, the sarpanch.

The village itself is in the back of beyond and it’s an ordeal just to reach here – half a day from Mumbai or Pune, the two nearest major cities, to get to Kolhapur followed by another long journey to Hanmantwadi, where autos are often reluctant to travel because of the distance and buses are infrequent.

A tribute poster near his home.

The region’s sporting interests, too, are different from most of India. While cricket remains the undisputed number one in most parts of the country, here, football can rival it in popularity and practice. On the face of it, Hanmantwadi – or Kolhapur in general – doesn’t have skin in the IPL game. There isn’t any team representing the region nor has a player from here made it that far.

Yet, such is the IPL’s lure that it has everyone hooked. Just last week, a fruit seller outside Shahu Market Yard won the jackpot of Rs 1 crore in a fantasy game.

Ravi Jadhav, the police patil, says: “Cricket has always been popular but in the last few years, IPL madness has reached unimaginable levels. People identify themselves as Mumbai Indians or Chennai diehards. People put it as their status messages. Cricket is one part but the IPL khunnas (hatred) is a new thing.”

Jadhav lives a few blocks away from the houses of the victim, Tibile, and the accused, Jhanjge.

Until a fortnight ago, he says, the two neighbours lived as neighbours normally do – caring and peaceful for the most part, nosy and nagging sometimes. Tibile, the village residents say, was active socially and used to be the first to help anyone in need. Jhanjge, they say, was a little “whimsical”, but it was all “minor”.

As they frequently did, on March 27, Tibile and Jhanjge met at a friend’s home across the street to watch IPL. They were joined by half a dozen others, who gathered around a tiny, antiquated box television set to watch the MI-SRH face-off.

It was a high-scoring match, Hyderabad would set Mumbai a humongous target of 278. Mumbai made a brisk start, but when Rohit Sharma got dismissed, Tibile taunted Jhanjge, a die-hard Mumbai Indians fan. “After the wicket, Tibile turned to Jhanjge and said, “Oh, Rohit is out, now Mumbai will lose!” recalls Bhapkar. “That triggered Jhanjge and the duo got involved in a heated argument.”

What started as banter turned into a full-fledged bashing of Tibile, who was thrashed with sticks. Some local residents tried to intervene, but out of nowhere, Jhanjge’s nephew Sagar emerged and landed a blow with a stick on the back of Tibile’s head.

Tibile collapsed on the door of his house and was rushed to a nearby hospital. Two days later, he was declared dead. “There was no other angle to their fight. No prior enmity, no fuss over anything else. Cricket is the reason for what happened. But the incident was just an accident,” sarpanch Bhapkar says.

Jhanjge and his nephew have been booked under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code. The two families got together and ensured things did not spiral out of control within the village.

It has left everyone, including the police, shocked. “We aren’t talking about youngsters. It’s two aged people who got involved in a fight that led to this tragic incident over a cricket match,” says Inspector Kishor Shinde of Karveer police station.

Subsequently, the police held a meeting, Shinde says, and decided to start an awareness programme among the villagers. “How much should one be obsessed about a particular thing? There has to be a limit. You can’t develop enmity towards others because of it. People get depressed too if their team loses, as if someone has died. How can it be addressed? Should the BCCI be responsible for educating the fans? Or the government?”

Shinde adds: “Earlier, entertainment used to come in the form of movies that we saw in cinema halls. It used to be a community affair. The IPL now is a similar thing. Watching matches is a community event but we must not forget that it is just entertainment. We must treat it like that.”

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