Times of India: Obaidullah Cup: Runners-up trophy goes missing

BHOPAL: The 70-year-old runners-up trophy of the Obaidullah Khan Hockey Gold Cup has gone missing.
The trophy has been missing for the last three to four years and this fact came to light on Wednesday when state government’s sports department announced that it wanted to organise the Obaidullah Khan Heritage Cup tournament. The Bhopal Hockey Association (BHA) wrote a letter to the sports department to return the trophy, while the latter claimed it had been returned to BHA.

The Obaidullah Khan Gold Cup was first held at Bhopal’s Aishbagh Stadium in 1931. After Independence, this tournament turned out to be one of the most prestigious national hockey competitions in the country with regular participation of national and international players. However, the tournament could not be organised between 2002 and 2008 owing to infighting in the BHA. The tournament resumed in 2009 after a gap of seven years when sports department took the initiative. It was successfully organised by sports department in 2010 also. In 2011, one of the factions in BHA moved high court, claiming that only the association has the right to organise Obaidullah Gold Cup. On the direction of court, both sports department and BHA reached an understanding and the court permitted the former to organise the tournament while directing it to seek active cooperation from BHA. The tournament was last organised in 2012. However, BHA again moved the court in 2013, alleging the sports department was not cooperating with them. Since then the runners-up trophy has been missing.

I Rehman, secretary of BHA, alleged: “As the cup belongs to BHA, we demanded it back from the sports department. They had returned Gold Cup winner’s trophy. Along with it they had given some other cup, which they claimed to be the runners-up trophy, but I had refused to take it as it was not the original runners-up trophy.” He added: “Since then I have been corresponding with them regularly but they have not given any clear answer to it. On May 2, 2016, I wrote another letter and gave them a week’s time to make their stand clear on the trophy. Else, we will be left with no option but to knock the doors of judiciary.”

The sports department officials however insisted they had returned the trophy. “We have the receipt that the trophies have been returned to them,” said a senior official. Reacting to it, Rehman said, “When I went to take both the trophies, I was told to give it in writing that I have received them. Later I was asked to collect them from their godown. When I reached there they tried to give me the replica of the runners-up trophy which I refused to accept.”