New Delhi: Indian businessman and former cricket administrator, Lalit Modi, is coming back to India after 16 years.
“I am coming back,” he wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “To all the doors that closed on me, I’m coming back to buy the building– Lalit Modi, Founder, IPL.”
Modi, the founder and former commissioner of the Indian Premier League, was the Vice President of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and was suspended that year. The BCCI’s disciplinary committee had found Modi guilty on eight different charges of “various acts of indiscipline and misconduct”. The cricket board also banned him for life in 2013. Enforcement Directorate also started investigating Modi for financial irregularities, and that’s when he left the country. Moved to London and was labeled a fugitive in India.
In July this year, the appellate tribunal under the Smugglers and Foreign Exchange Manipulators (Forfeiture of Property) Act, 1976, overturned most of the ED’s findings. It exonerated Lalit Modi.
Also read: Life, mind and times of Lalit Modi
“The King”
The buzz around Modi’s return started last month, when, in a video statement shared with ANI, he shared his plans to come back to India after October this year.
“I’m really happy with the verdict yesterday (July verdict). It’s really been a great day. 16 years, I have fought, and whatever I have been saying to the media and to everybody has finally emerged as the truth. I’m really happy that the tribunal has ruled in my favour. I was only concerned with the well-being of the IPL and nothing and nothing at all. That is the most dear to me,” he said.
In a series of Instagram posts, Modi portrayed himself as the “King behind a billion dreams.” One post, captioned “The Goat,” was shared eight hours ago and described him as a “gamechanger.” Featuring a brooding photograph of Modi, the poster read: “Legends don’t just play the game, they change it forever.”
Earlier this year, he made it to the headlines when he spoke about Sushmita Sen being a complete diva, and how he was her “kept-boyfriend”.
In another post on Instagram posted 15 hours ago, which is marked as AI content, read, “They thought the story ended, it was only the intermission.”
Modi isn’t coming back for good, though. He will continue to live in London.
“For clarity. I will continue to live in London and visit India as it’s my country from time to time and to establish my son’s rightful place in the family business,” he wrote in July.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)