Five days after the completion of the National under-18 online rapid chess championship, the All India Chess Federation (AICF) on Thursday took away the title from Odisha’s Manish Kumar and named Bengal’s Aronyak Ghosh champion.
The development followed the ruling of the Fairplay panel that found conclusive evidence against Manish of using unfair means on his way to the third place in the National under-16 event on Tuesday.
“The members of the Fairplay panel had doubts over Manish’s play even in the under-18, but there was no conclusive evidence. But during the under-16 championship, Manish was found cheating. The committee unanimously decided to nullify all his results,” confirmed AICF secretary Bharat Singh Chauhan.
As a result, Aronyak and Ayush Sharma, who tied with Manish for the title, were elevated as winner and runner-up respectively. Sankalp Gupta took the third spot.
