The Bombay High Court on Thursday levied a ₹1 lakh fine on former IPL commissioner Lalit Modi for his plea, which the court termed “wholly misconceived”. Modi had sought a court direction for the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to pay a ₹10.65 crore penalty on his behalf, a penalty levied for FEMA violations.
Justices Mahesh S Sonak and Jitendra S Jain, in their ruling, described the plea as frivolous and decreed that the costs be paid to the Tata Memorial Hospital. Modi, through his advocate Mohit Goyal, had initially requested the BCCI to directly pay the Enforcement Directorate (ED) the penalty imposed on him by the adjudicating authority, citing BCCI’s by-laws that supposedly required the cricket board to indemnify him.
The case stems from a 2018 Enforcement Directorate investigation into alleged FEMA violations. This investigation concerned the unlawful transfer of ₹243 crore to South Africa for the 2009 IPL edition. The adjudicating authority had slapped a collective penalty of ₹121.56 crore on Modi and others, attributing ₹10.65 crore of that amount to Modi personally.
The court noted that despite a previous Supreme Court ruling confirming that BCCI falls under the writ jurisdiction of the High Court for certain matters, the specific plea for indemnification related to ED penalties does not involve the discharge of any public function by the BCCI. Consequently, the court affirmed that it could not compel the BCCI to cover Modi’s fines through a writ.
