TOI correspondent from London: IPL founder Lalit Modi, who fled to London in 2010 after the cricket tournament was embroiled in alleged match-fixing and illegal betting, has announced he will be returning to India.On Tuesday the appellate tribunal under SAFEMA in New Delhi set aside penalties imposed on him by the ED in connection with the Fema case related to the 2009 IPL held in South Africa.Modi will continue to live in his 22,000-sq-ft mansion with nine bedrooms in London’s Belgrave Square. “As my name has been cleared, I don’t want to be shown as I can’t go back. My daughter is having a baby in Oct so I might go then. I have won all my cases in India and there is nothing outstanding. I am confident I can go back. My home remains London, but my heart has never stopped beating for India,” he said.Modi surrendered his Indian passport last year after acquiring Vanuatu citizenship, so will now have to apply for an OCI card. “Hopefully they will grant me the same so I can visit my homeland,” he told TOI by phone from the jet-set island of Mykonos, Greece. “I am a Vanuatu citizen. It has never been taken away.”He was sacked as chairman of the franchise cricket league on multiple charges of financial irregularities after the IPL 3 final in 2010. In 2013 the BCCI banned him for life.“They will lift the ban themselves when they want to, but I am not going to get involved in cricket. I have created the biggest property in the world for them and it should be the right thing for them to do. But it doesn’t bother me,” he said.He claimed the actual reason he fled India was because Dawood Ibrahim had made threats to his life. “It was because I wasn’t allowing fixing. I see no reason to be a threat to him anymore. I would be bothered about him if I was going to be involved in cricket, but I have no intentions of being involved in cricket,” he said.He said a red corner notice against him was never issued and no extradition request was ever executed. “There was no document to prove anything,” he said.
