The Congress on Tuesday sought an independent investigation into the Lalit Modi controversy by a Supreme Court appointed and monitored Special Investigation Team. The party said the Modi government was ‘complicit’ in protecting the former IPL chief, wanted by Indian law, and did not expect it to conduct a fair probe.
The party also sought to know who in the government had decided not to appeal against the court’s decision to release Mr. Modi’s passport.
“The Government of India did not oppose the case before the Division Bench of the High Court. The court ordered re-issuance of the passport and even then they did not appeal against it,” Congress leader Anand Sharma said. He said the sequence of events “established that there are friends of Lalit Modi trying to help him.”
The matter did not “simply pertain to a travel document but the complicity at the highest levels in the government that needs probing,” Mr. Sharma said.
He asserted that Ms. Swaraj in helping Lalit get a travel document to Portugal had subverted due process. He should have appealed to the Indian embassy in the U.K. instead of Ms. Swaraj “extending suo motu help and an unacceptable concession to a person who should have been extradited,” Mr. Sharma said.
