Disciplinary Committee hands fines, bans to BFC

Following the Disciplinary Committee meeting, the Bangalore District Football Association on Friday hit Bengaluru FC with a slew of fines and bans in the wake of the altercation between players/ staff of the club and referees. The ugly scenes occurred following BFC's 3-2 loss in the BDFA Super Division to eventual champions FC Bengaluru United on Monday.

The committee handed out a three-month ban and fine of Rs 5,000 to defender Harpreet Singh and a six month ban and a fine of Rs 10,000 to fellow player Jagdeep Singh. Assistant coach Rajan Mani was slapped with a six-month ban and a fine of Rs 15,000. All these were unanimously decided.

In addition, the committee also resolved - based on majority - to ban assistant manager and operations manager Satish Kumar for 12 months and handed a fine of Rs 50,000.

Further more, the committee issued a severe warning 'to BFC so that no such incident happens in future and instruct them to warn their players and officials not to bring disrepute to BDFA, KSFA, referees board and the game of football'.

"The referee's report was taken into account and there was a lot of deliberation before the disciplinary committee reached a decision," said a BDFA official who also confirmed that the referees had mentioned the physical altercation in the reports along with names of the personnel.

The club has the right to appeal against the decision and when reached out, chose to refrain from issuing any comments at the moment.

However, there are some confusion regarding the bans and whether it's applicable to just BDFA's footballing activity or beyond. That said, a former FIFA referee remarked that since the sentencing has been for months rather than matches, the players ideally will not be allowed to play any tournament in the country.