Modi, the man with the golden touch — and a past

Third Man writes:

Must a man’s misdeeds, committed in the first flush of youth, come back to haunt him 23 years later? In Victor Hugo’s masterpiece Les Miserables, the protagonist, Jean Valjean, committed an insignificant indiscretion in youth and desperation; he found an implacable enemy in Inspector Javert, who proved an unshakeable foe, the man who gave him a lifelong chase towards a tragic denouement.

Javert, an unyielding agent of justice, drowned himself in the Seine when he could not reconcile his chase with Valjean’s redemption and nobility after very minor brushes with law. For, must a man who’s paid his debt to society forever be thought as the law’s enemy?

Fiction and life imitate each other; it now has emerged that the current darling of the page 3 people, the usher of the new age of billion-dollar cricket, Lalit Modi, was convicted for possession of cocaine, with an intent to traffic it – 400 grams of it – when he was 21.

Hindustan Times carried the story on its front page, just three days after Modi, in a TV interview, said: "It was something that was thrown away by the courts and the judicial system in America and it was something that happened when I was in my teens in college in America."

Clearly, someone is lying. When Mail Today published a story on Modi’s allegedly criminal past, they also printed a document that showed Modi had confessed his guilt. The case was not thrown away – Modi pleaded guilty to bargain a milder sentence. Another point – in 1985, Modi was clearly past his teens. He was also charged with criminal assault, along with three others.

Now, it's natural for someone in his position to deny the charge now – use of recreational drugs is often looked at with an indulgent eye, but peddling them is far serious business.

Sports journalists say that those documents have been in circulation for years – it's only Hindustan Times and Mail Today who could find the courage to publish his confession.

Twenty-three years is sufficient distance to let a man go, even if the crime were as serious as it seems – if there has been no further suggestion of misdeeds associated with him. However, with Modi, that’s not the case. He's been accused of joining cricket administration through dubious methods; the IPL – as the Indian Express has reported – has become a private money-making enterprise of a select chosen ones.

Modi proclaims his innocence, but it’s clear that he has much to answer for.