It's official: Lalit Kumar Modi can board the next flight home.
The Delhi high court on Wednesday ordered restoration of the passport of the controversial former Indian Premier League (IPL) commissioner. A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Vibhu Bakhru set aside the order revoking Modi's passport because materials taken into consideration while doing so were "extraneous and irrelevant".
The bench, however, refused to express any opinion on the alleged violations Modi may have committed under the Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA).
Modi, who has been living in London since 2010, expressed joy and relief. "It has been a long and hard fight and today (Wednesday), I stand vindicated. I have always believed in our legal system and, finally, justice has prevailed. Virtually every case that was based on falsehoods has not been able to stand up to our legal system and, for that, I am thankful. I have always maintained that I am keen to return to India and return I will sooner rather than later. But I will continue to fight the good fight for the sake of cleansing our beloved game of cricket and everything that continues to ail it," he said in a statement.
Modi, whose election to the post of president of the Rajasthan Cricket Association prompted the BCCI to suspend the body, is at loggerheads with N Srinivasan. A staunch critic and basher of the BCCI's president-in-abeyance, Modi is known to use his Twitter and Facebook accounts to post hilarious and, at times, insensitive posts condemning the Chennai-based cement baron. After all, it was Srinivasan who played a major role in suspending Modi from the BCCI in 2010.
These are interesting times for Indian cricket administrators. On one hand, a Supreme Court-appointed committee is investigating Srinivasan's role in the IPL spot-fixing scandal. And now there's Modi, who after four years in exile, is desperate to reclaim all that he lost.
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