Lalit Modi - IPL War is on!

That IPL commissioner Lalit Modi had a brush with the law as a student in the US has been widely reported. It’s said he was booked under a drug charge. Modi himself hasn’t quite denied it, saying those were indiscretions of youth and that he is a very different man today. But TOI discovered it wasn’t a drug charge against Modi — it was something else. Here are two reports of March and April 1985 in a local paper, Times-News, Hendersonville, North Carolina, that gives the real story.

The first report appeared on March 1, 1985, headlined ‘Drug buyers robbed at gunpoint’. Durham: Four Duke University students were arrested and a fifth was being sought in a bogus cocaine deal that left one student beaten after a group of would-be drug buyers was robbed at gunpoint of $10,000, law enforcement officers say.

Charged were (among others): John El-Masry of Waltham, Mass, a lineman on the Duke football team. He was arrested Wednesday and charged with assaulting Van Dyne with a deadly weapon with intent to kill, inflicting serious injuries. Lalit Kumar Modi of New Delhi, India, a Duke sophomore. He was arrested Tuesday night on charges of conspiracy to traffic cocaine and assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.

The second report, appearing on April 2, 1985, was on Modi’s indictment. Durham: Three Duke University students and a Los Angeles man were indicted by a Durham County Superior Court grand jury on charges stemming from what police have described as a bogus cocaine deal. Durham County District Attorney Ronald Stephens said the grand jury on Monday indicted Duke sophomore Lalit Kumar Modi of New Delhi, India, on a charge of conspiracy to traffic more than 400 grams of cocaine.

Modi and Duke football player John El-Masry were indicted on second-degree kidnapping, a misdemeanour charge of assault inflicting serious injury and conspiracy to kidnap, Stephens said. Duke sophomore Alexander Van Dyne of Dix Hills, New York, and Shepherd Small of Los Angeles, who isn’t a student, were indicted on armed robbery charges and conspiracy to commit armed robbery.