WSF bans Pakistan Squash Federation secretary

The World Squash Federation imposed a one-year ban on Pakistan Squash Federation secretary Irfan Asghar on Friday, for stating that WSF president N Ramachandran played a "malicious role" in preventing his country's players from obtaining visas for a tournament in Belgium.

The WSF said Asghar brought both the sport and the federation into "disrepute".

The WSF said that, in an interview given to The News of Pakistan and a website on July 12 and 14, Asghar had alleged that "delay by the WSF in sending visa letters to Pakistan was the prime reason why the Belgium Embassy in Islamabad refused to issue visas to Pakistani players, preventing them from participating in the World Junior Individual Championship (July 13 to 17, Belgium)."

Asghar had reportedly said that WSF president N Ramachandran had a malicious role in preventing the Pakistani players from obtaining the visas.

"The allegations were put to Irfan Asghar by the WSF Disciplinary and Appeals Committee (DAC) who denied that he had spoken to the journalist, Khalid Hussein of The News, and suggested that these comments were totally a personal statement by the journalist and, in effect, suggested he was neither reliable nor credible," the WSF said in a statement.

"Upon enquiry, the telephone log of the journalist proved that a phone call of six minutes duration on July 11, 2011, came from the mobile phone number of Irfan Asghar. The DAC reached the view that such a conversation did take place and that the comments as reported in the press were made by Irfan Asghar," it added.

The WSF said the visa applications could not be cleared because of a confusion created by the PSF itself.

"In respect to the visa application for the Pakistani players, the DAC established that the first request for a letter of support from WSF was made on 24 June 2011. This was less than three weeks before the start of the championship," the WSF said.

"This request for the letter of support was confused in that it was sent to the German hosts of the World Men's Team Championship, which was an unrelated championship," it added.

"A follow up e-mail was sent by Pakistan Squash to WSF on 29 June. Their e-mail clarified their request and the support letter was sent by WSF the same day this follow up was received," it added.

"Given the confusion caused by forwarding the request to the organisers of another event, the DAC did not accept that there was any fault with the WSF office, and took the view that the requests were unreasonably late and there must have been doubt whether visas could have been issued prior to the event in any case."

The WSF said the allegations against Ramachandran was in effect of "corruption".

"The DAC determined that the WSF President has no involvement in such matters and that as there was an immediate response this was completely unfounded and the malicious allegation brought the President, the World Squash Federation, and the sport into disrepute.

"The decision of the DAC is to ban Irfan Asghar from any involvement in all WSF events for a period of 12 months from 7 October 2011 and to impose a fine of 500 pounds, payable within 30 days," the WSF said.