Defending 'victim' Lalit Modi: BJP is rallying around former IPL chairman to protect its own

Lalit Modi should be a happy man today because it’s not Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj who thought that he needed the patronage of a foreign country to keep away from Indian law, but the BJP itself. Increasingly, the BJP seems to be asserting the claim that he is a victim. Also lined up to support this interesting argument are celebrity-columnists such as Shobhaa De and Tavleen Singh. Shobhaa De wants her readers to “think of him as a victim and not the villain”  while Tavleen says that there are no charges against him, implying him that he broke no law and is not a fugitive as the media paints him. This is exactly what Lalit Modi himself is claiming. Let’s first look at the bizarre chances that the BJP is taking. It was the party spokesperson GVL Narasimha Rao, who came up with the idea that Lalit Modi was a victim of the previous UPA regime. Participating in prime time TV discussions, he had no qualms in postulating his victim theory. Even while asserting that his government will pursue the investigation against Lalit Modi, he echoed the latter’s theory that he was being hounded by the UPA because he exposed Sashi Tharoor’s alleged deals in the IPL. [caption id=“attachment_2313762” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Lalit Modi. AFP.[/caption] Another regular spokesperson, Sambit Patra, also said almost the same thing. While he didn’t overtly support Lalit Modi’s or Rao’s claims of victimhood, he used a document that the evasive former IPL commissioner happily refers to - the Delhi High Court verdict restoring his Indian passport. On more than one channel discussion, Patra quoted the court order to repeat a central argument that Modi has been making - that he was not running away from the law and the Enforcement Directorate could have interrogated him through video conferencing. What Patra, however conceals is the fact that his government hadn’t appealed against it in the Supreme Court, which meant that for the BJP, it was the final word. By not appealing against the order and by quoting from it only strengthens Lalit Modi’s argument. The simultaneous assertion that “we will certainly bring him to India” was clearly forked tongue. The clever spins by Rao and Patra are classic BJP-double speak that seeks to express two contrasting arguments in the same breath - whether it’s Vajpayee’s stand on the nuclear bomb during his first term in office (we are the only ones with the courage, but others too were open), LK Advani’s regret over Babri Masjid demolition (an original accused still not cleared by the SC saying in 2005 that the masjid demolition was the “saddest day in his life”) or Narendra Modi’s commitment to secularism (speaking for secularism at UNESCO in Paris and mocking “secularists” later in Germany). The BJP’s victim theory and Patra’s argument that he could have been questioned on video conferencing need a closer reading. As this report shows there are more than two dozen cases of financial irregularities and money laundering, and criminal cases filed against Lalit Modi by various investigative agencies in the country. Some other reports put this number at 20 and all of them are grave charges. The first stage in any investigation is questioning and the agencies had sent him notices, but instead of appearing before them, he fled to the UK and stayed there ever since. His argument is that he had sent his lawyers and had filed written submissions. This is exactly what many accused in financial irregularities and criminal cases do - they go underground as soon as they get a whiff of investigation against them. The resourceful ones flee and stay underground for ever and some land up later when their luck and money run out. If one has the money and people-power like Lalit Modi, one can land up in a country like the UK and be visible while effectively being underground. This is where the arguments of people such as Tavleen Singh become vacuous. Appearing on NDTV on Thursday, Tavleen said there are no cases against Lalit. True, but the reason for that is that he ran away even before investigation started. Had A Raja, Suresh Kalmadi and the Marans too had run away without appearing before the investigating agencies, could they have been able to frame charges against them, other than what’s clearly on paper? Without investigation, how could one chargesheet the accused and go to court for trial? If a video conferencing is good enough, why does the Enforcement Directorate or other investigative agencies ask for custodial interrogation of the accused? Had Modi stayed back, he would have been interrogated multiple times, perhaps under custody at a certain stage, and a lot of steps would have been undertaken to collect evidence. By evading the investigators, he effectively ducked the due process of law. Along with him, a lot of crucial evidence also would have disappeared. One of the reasons why people evade investigative agencies, even temporarily, is to destroy evidence. In fact, Vasundhara Raje’s affidavit strongly supports Lalit Modi’s victimisation argument - that he was a victim of the Indian State and hence he deserves refuge in the UK. By telling the UK government that India has no problem in their granting him travel documents, Sushma Swaraj, further lent credence to his theory of State persecution. By the same logic, nothing would have prevented Raja, Kalmadi and the Marans or anybody else facing criminal investigations from claiming State persecution and seeking protection by other countries. People with money have a lot of offshore options. Clearly, the BJP’s support to Lalit Modi’s victim theory is to protect Raje and Swaraj. They can be clean, only if their protagonist is clean. Already, there have been legal arguments from the BJP camp - “what law have they (Raje, Swaraj) broken?” By making things legal, the BJP obviously hopes to ward off the cloud of impropriety and ethics. In the end, this is what BJP spokespersons effectively tell Indians: run away from investigators so that they will be unable to find evidence against you and frame larges - you will be eternally innocent; if you are resourceful, go abroad, be visible virtually and claim political persecution for your absence; design a fraud in such a away that you keep your money in the Cayman islands of the world so that nothing compromises luxury in your offshore life; and most importantly, script your heist and escape-plan carefully so that the potential collateral damage will protect you.