India's malicious Modi(s): Lalit and Nirav
A court in India's Suart on Thursday (23 March) sentenced Indian Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to 2 years in jail in a criminal defamation case over his remark "all thieves have Modi as the common surname" during the 2019 Lok Sabha election.
"Modi" is an Indian surname most commonly found among people from Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttar Pradesh. The most famous person with the Modi surname is of course the present Indian Prime Minister Narendra Damodardas Modi. However, there are two more Indians who have perhaps gained infamy equal to the Indian premier's famousness – Lalit Modi and Nirav Modi.
Let's take a look at who are these two malicious Modis -
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The cricket crook: Lalit Modi
Lalit Modi is the founder chairman and the commissioner of the widely popular Indian Premier League (IPL) that mixed glamour with the T20 format of cricket. As a scion of a leading business family, Modi is the executive director of Godfrey Phillips India.
Shortly after the IPL 2010 final, he was suspended from the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI)after being accused of misconduct, indiscipline and financial irregularities, and rigging bids. BCCI launched an investigation against him, and banned him for life in 2013 after a committee found him guilty of these charges.
He has since lived out of London and given several interviews claiming innocence on all charges raised by the BCCI.
In 2015, a special court in Mumbai issued a non-bailable arrest warrant against him for his alleged involvement in a money-laundering case.
UK High Court had ordered Modi to pay $800,000 last year to former Indian model-turned-investor Gurpreet Gill Maag, over a legal challenge the latter had filed seeking damages amounting to millions of dollars from Lalit Modi over alleged deceit and breach of contract.
Diamonds and dirty: Nirav Modi
Nirav Deepak Modi is a diamond jewellery designer and the founder of Firestar Diamond, which claimed to have more than $2 billion in sales. He later launched his own Nirav Modi Brand with 14 stores in such locations as Mumbai, Hong Kong, London, Macau and New York.
In February 2018, he was accused by India's Punjab National Bank (PNB) of perpetrating a $1.8 billion fraud. However, he reportedly had left India in January 2018 and wound up in London, where he was taken into custody.
Nirav Modi has said his companies owed much less and denied the fraud charges.
In March 2018, Modi applied for bankruptcy protection in Manhattan, New York. In June that year, he was reported to be in the UK where he reportedly applied for political asylum. In June 2019, Swiss authorities froze a total of $6 million present in Nirav Modi's Swiss bank accounts along with the assets.
He holds a Belgian passport and is a fugitive who was charged by Interpol and the government of India for criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, cheating and dishonesty including delivery of property, corruption, money laundering, fraud, embezzlement and breach of contract.
India is seeking his extradition from the UK.
