Chennai: Enforcement Directorate and Chennai Police, two agencies probing the disgraced former IPL boss Lalit Modi’s alleged financial irregularities, have locked horns over delay in taking the case to its logical conclusion.
While ED says the delay in chargesheeting by Chennai police is prolonging the extradition process, the latter agency top brass is of the view the former should handle the money laundering case on its own without depending on probe by Chennai Police.
While ED claims that it has written to Chennai police asking the latter to fast track the case, Chennai police has not made much progress since it registered the case in October 2010. Former BCCI secretary N. Srinivasan had filed a complaint against Modi alleging criminal misappropriation of funds to the tune of Rs 470 crore on issues, including media rights and free commercial rights.
“We are still probing the case,” Chennai city CCB source told this newspaper and suggested that ED should handle the case on its own. Another officer did not rule out the possibility of handing over the Chennai IPL case to Mumbai police. The ED had secured an extradition order against Lalit Modi from a Mumbai court. But it is waiting for Chennai police to charge sheet his case so that it can present a water tight case before the authorities of UK, where Modi is currently stationed. The city police is the only agency which had registered a criminal case against Modi.
For the last five years, Chennai police top brass had been maintaining that the case was a 'very complicated’ one. The police here had summoned some associates of Lalit Modi at that time. But it never moved beyond that.
Chennai police had been claiming that the case was complicated and there are a lot of ‘technical issues’ to be addressed besides promising to take it to a ‘logical end’. The city police registered a case against Modi and six others under IPC for offences including criminal conspiracy, criminal breach of trust, falsification of accounts and cheating.
