Former Indian Premier League chief Lalit Modi has strongly denied the ‘runaway cheater’ title in an exclusive interview with news agency ANI, clarifying that he is not hiding from the authorities, but the whole idea is a hype created by the media. Modi, who has been under investigation by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) since 2010, has said he has no plans to return to India to exonerate himself.
The former cricket administrator denied claims that he was a fugitive and said it was impossible to hide from a global superpower like India. “If he was actually absconding, the Indian government could have arrested him from anywhere,” he said. He said he had no intention of going against the government and termed the incident as media propaganda rather than legal reality. He accused the media of taking advantage of India’s lack of strict defamation laws to sell his story.
At the same time, he severely criticized the Indian judicial system and said that the slow pace of justice in the country has become a kind of punishment. Claiming that no formal case has yet been filed against him in court, Modi challenged the authorities to take him to court if necessary. He questioned the fact that he had not been taken to court for the past 17 years and said that it was not possible to arrest him in the current situation. Despite serious charges of bid-rigging, money laundering and violation of the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) brought against him in 2010, he insisted that he was not being held in any criminal case.