NT Cricket umpire Himanshu Bhatia banned after offensive Facebook comment

An NT Cricket umpire has been banned from officiating Cricket 365 matches after calling for the government to “stop feeding” Indigenous people in a public Facebook comment.

NT Cricket has banned an umpire from all Cricket 365 matches after it found he made an offensive Facebook comment calling for the government to “stop feeding” Indigenous people.

Himanshu Bhatia’s comment posted on the NT News Facebook page read “another classic example of crime around Indigenous population. Never ending saga. Enough is enough. Stop feeding them”.

It was subsequently removed by the page’s administrators but not before NT Cricket noticed and deemed it content that could be interpreted as “racist and offensive”.

When first questioned by NT Cricket about the post, Bhatia claimed somebody had hacked into his home computer or mobile phone as “cybercrimes are common these days”.

However Bhatia, who migrated to the Territory from Delhi in 2005 to study at Charles Darwin University, rejected any suggestion his comment was racist when confronted with the post, which he later admitted he had written.

NT Cricket umpire Himanshu Bhatia was banned for a year following an online comment.

Instead, in an appeal to Cricket Australia he claimed the comment was made in relation to “how Centrelink money is abused in the name of alcohol abuse and locals have to suffer with the after effects”.

“My comment was to raise my concern as a community member,” he said.

“All I meant was that stop giving free Centrelink as it contributes to anti-social behaviour with abuse of liquor consumption.

“Part of the reason I wrote the comment was because like all other locals I was angry as a young 19-year-old was (allegedly) murdered by an Indigenous person while working in a BWS store.”

Bhatia also indicated he did not literally mean “stop feeding” food to Indigenous Australians in a letter to Cricket NT through his lawyer Cassandra Ellis.

The comment was found to be of a racist nature resulting in Bhatia being barred from officiating the looming Strike League and Top End T20 series.

In a letter from his lawyer to NT Cricket Bhatia said he was “deeply sorry” for any offence caused, agreed he had shown poor judgment and it was “poorly worded, open to misinterpretation and was not constructive” and English was not his first language.

“At times he uses words out of context or expresses himself in a manner that is not objectively clear, or is open to misinterpretation,” the letter stated.

“Mr Bhatia wrote the comment in a moment of frustration.

“His intended meaning was absolutely not that Indigenous Australians should not be fed food, but rather was in relation to a perception that, at times, government welfare payments can be freely utilised to purchase alcohol.

“And that alcohol use can (and does, particularly when used in excess) at times contribute to and fuel violence in our communities.”

In an April letter to Bhatia’s legal team, NT Cricket said the umpire intially had not been totally forthcoming and had chosen to “claim ignorance, obfuscate and suggest his social media account had been hacked”.

“While words and comments are often misconstrued, it is difficult on this occasion to fully accept that Mr Bhatia’s comments were intended to be anything other than how they were perceived by both the complainant, and those responsible for moderating the social media platform,” it said.

Bhatia declined to appeal the ruling but instead contacted Cricket Australia to assess the matter.

CA’s Head of Integrity declined to investigate, stating NT Cricket was a non-member association with its own codes policies and disciplinary procedures and no avenue to appeal through CA.

Despite declining to appeal the charges Bhatia said he believed “unfair justice was done in his case”.

Bhatia is still umpiring in B Grade in the Darwin & Districts Cricket Competition.