Time has taken a full circle. They we’re his friends and business partners. Now, they are petitioners against veteran cricketer MS Dhoni who has alleged that they had duped him of crores of rupees.

The latest news is that the Delhi high court will on January 29 consider a suit filed by cricketer MS Dhoni’s ex-business partner Mihir Diwakar and his wife Soumya Das seeking to restrain the cricketer from making defamatory allegations against the couple of duping him of ₹15 crore by breaching the contract of establishing cricket academies. 

A bench of Justice Prathiba Singh on Thursday directed the duo and the court’s registry to give an intimation to the cricketer about the suit. 

“Before going into the allegations in the complaint & the maintainability of the suit for injunction, it is deemed appropriate to direct intimation to defendant No 1 (MS Dhoni) of the filing of the present suit. Let the registry issue an email to defendant No 1,” the judge said in the order. 

The suit arises out of the agreement entered between the company, Aarka Sports Management, a company owned by the duo, and the cricketer in 2017, wherein Dhoni was to receive the full franchise fee and profits were to be shared on a 70:30 basis between the cricketer and the ex-partners. 

According to the cricketer, he had in August 2021, however, revoked the agreement but the former partners continued setting up academies in eight to 10 locations without informing him and did not make payments to him. 

In October last year, Dhoni had also filed a criminal case against the duo under Sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) in Ranchi court. 

The duo in the suit had contended that the allegations were made without any basis and evidence with the sole intention to tarnish and malign their reputation and that the same are wild, false, baseless, vindictive and unfounded.