What next? Vasundhara Raje ‘secretly’ supported Lalit Modi’s UK immigration plea: reports
Mumbai: Former IPL chief Lalit Modi had many helpful friends in the BJP, it is now emerging. Television reports now suggest that Rajasthan chief minister Vasundhara Raje had in August 2011 endorsed Lalit Modi’s UK immigration application with a rider – her support should not be made known to Indian authorities.
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Raje was then the Leader of Opposition in the Rajasthan Assembly. The former IPL chief has obviously dragged Vasundhara Raje into the present row as her 'witness statement' was among documents that were mailed to news channels on Tuesday by a public relations firm hired by Lalit Modi’s lawyer Mehmood Abdi. The documents claim that Vasundhara Raje was a ‘secret witness’ to Lalit Modi’s UK immigration application.
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"The witness statement is provided on the strict understanding that its contents and the identity of its maker are treated confidentially and that it is used only for the purposes stated in it," says the alleged statement by Raje, dated August 8, 2011.
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The document also says, "I make this statement in support of any immigration application that Lalit Modi makes, but do so on the strict condition that my assistance will not become known to the Indian authorities."
The three-page note, however, does not have Vasundhara Raje’s signature and ends abruptly.
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In a media meet in Mumbai on Monday, Abdi had stated that Lalit Modi was harassed by the UPA government. He suggested that the UPA government unarmed his security and forced Modi to leave the country.
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External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj is in the firing line of the Opposition at the moment for having leaned on the British government to allow Lalit Modi to visit Portugal for his wife’s cancer surgery.
