The prime minister of Vanuatu has ordered the cancellation of a passport issued by the island nation to fugitive Indian businessman Lalit Modi, who is wanted by Delhi in a corruption case.
The order came three days after India confirmed that Mr Modi had got citizenship of Vanuatu, a string of more than 80 islands in the Pacific Ocean.
Mr Modi, the former chief of the Indian Premier League (IPL), is wanted for allegedly rigging bids during his tenure as the head of the world’s richest cricket tournament.
Mr Modi, who has been living in the UK since 2010, has always denied the allegations.
India has made several unsuccessful attempts to extradite him.
On Friday, India’s foreign ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal told reporters that Mr Modi had applied to surrender his Indian passport in London.
“We are also given to understand that he has acquired citizenship of Vanuatu. We continue to pursue the case against him as required under law,” Jaiswal had said.
The news of Mr Modi becoming a Vanuatu citizen had made headlines in India, where he was once the face of the glamorous, cash-rich IPL tournament. He was a regular presence on the social scene, rubbing shoulders with Bollywood stars and India’s elite.
But on Monday, Vanuatu’s Prime Minister Jotham Napat announced that his country had decided to cancel Mr Modi’s citizenship.
Napat said a Vanuatu passport was a “privilege” and that “applicants must seek citizenship for legitimate reasons”.
“None of those legitimate reasons include attempting to avoid extradition, which the recent facts brought to light clearly indicate was Mr Modi’s intention,” a media release quoted Napat as saying.
He said that background checks and Interpol screenings conducted during Mr Modi’s application for a passport had shown no criminal convictions.
But, he added, that in the past 24 hours, he had been made aware that Interpol had twice rejected India’s requests to issue an alert notice on Mr Modi, citing a lack of “substantive judicial evidence”.
“Any such alert would’ve triggered an automatic rejection of Mr Modi’s citizenship application,” the release added.
The move is likely to bring relief to Indian authorities. Unlike the UK, Vanuatu does not have an extradition treaty with India.
Extradition treaties allow repatriation of people accused of crimes between countries.
A day earlier, Mr Modi wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter) that there were no cases pending against him in any court in India and accused the media of peddling “fake news” about him.
Mr Modi was instrumental in founding the IPL in 2008, which has now become a multi-billion-dollar industry.
The main accusations against Mr Modi relate to rigging bids during the auction of two team franchises in 2010. He was also accused of selling broadcasting and internet rights without authorisation.
In 2013, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) banned Mr Modi from any involvement in cricket activities for life.
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