B. Gurunath Meiyappan of Chennai Super Kings (CSK) managed to avoid the waiting media contingent at the Madurai airport on Friday evening by changing his car on his way to the airport from Kodaikanal. He flew out of the temple town to Mumbai by a chartered flight.
Journalists began gathering outside the airport since 2 p.m. when news spread that he was flying to Mumbai via Madurai. He was initially expected to take a regular passenger flight scheduled to take off at 2.15 p.m. since the Mumbai police had summoned him for enquiry by 5 p.m. in connection with the IPL betting and spot-fixing scandal.
However, Mr. Meiyappan did not turn up to catch that flight. The reporters later learnt that he had planned to take a chartered flight stationed in the airport. But that did not happen very soon. After more than three hours of waiting, his SUV, a white Toyota Land Cruiser bearing number TN-01 AM 9001 entered the airport, waited at the farther end of the terminal for a while and moved towards the parking lot.
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Perplexed as to why the vehicle was being driven to the parking lot instead of the entry gate, the journalists ran towards it. In the meantime, Mr. Meiyappan entered the airport after getting down from a hired Toyota Innova to which he had shifted on the way to the airport. Yet, he could not escape the eyes of one of the photo-journalists standing near the entry gate.
Mr. Meiyappan was accompanied by senior advocate P.S. Raman who had represented the BCCI in many cases and is also one of the four vice-presidents (city) of the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association. They took off in the private plane at around 5.25 p.m. and the SUV, sporting a pass to the Kodaikanal flower show on its windshield, was driven away from the parking lot after the flight took off.