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Ticketgate: Narvekar, eight others acquitted Colva: A local court on Friday acquitted former Goa Cricket Association chief Dayanand Narvekar and eight others accused in the 2001 ticketgate scam.Judicial magistrate first class Carlo da Silva, the designated judge to try corruption cases, had given ample opportunity to the government to appoint prosecutors to lead the evidence. However, since this didn’t materialise, he closed the evidence. The earlier special public prosecutors had withdrawn from the case citing personal reasons.The Margao police’s case was that on April 6, 2001, Narvekar, GCA treasurer Ramshankar Das and secretary Vinod Phadke entered into a criminal conspiracy with contractor Chinmay Fallari for the sale of tickets by manipulating a tender for Rs 68 lakh. The tickets were for the India v Australia ODI cricket match at the Nehru stadium in Fatorda.Police further charged the GCA office-bearers of intentionally printing 29,000 tickets and complimentary passes in excess of the stadium’s capacity.The excess 1,650 tickets, worth Rs 9.4 lakh, were allegedly unauthorisedly given to Narvekar’s brother-in-law Eknath Naik, who sold the tickets to the general public at a premium, thereby cheating them, according to police. Narvekar, a former deputy CM, is a veteran state politician.Narvekar, Phadke, Das, Naik, Chinmay Fallari, Devdutt Fallari, Gajanan Bhise, Joaquim Pires, and Venkat Raut Dessai were charged under Sections 471 (forgery), 420 (cheating), and 201(destruction of evidence) read with 120-B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC.