POLITICS// The BJP battled a deepening row involving two of its top leaders, Vasundhara Raje and Sushma Swaraj, for helping Lalit Modi, tainted former IPL Commissioner, “an economic offender and a fugitive”. Modi moved to London amid an avalanche of corruption charges and has refused to return to India claiming death threats from the underworld. His passport had been cancelled by India. Between 2008 and 2010, Modi, paid just over Rs 96,000 per share for more than 900 shares in a company owned by Raje’s son, law-maker Dushyant Singh. The sweetness of the deal is apparent from the fact that in his income tax returns, Singh has said his shares in the same firm are worth just Rs 10 each. Modi’s firm also purveyed a Rs three crore loan without any guarantees to Singh’s company. Though Raje’s party, the BJP, has defended the deal as one that met all legal requirements including taxes, sources in the Enforcement Directorate disagree and said “there is no clean chit to anyone at this stage.” Earlier in 2011, in a signed statement, Raje described the expansive investigation against cricket tycoon Lalit Modi as “a full frontal attack” that was “politically motivated.” The document also read, “I make this statement with support of any immigration/application that Lalit Modi makes. But do so on the strict condition that my assistance will not become known to the Indian authority.” That affidavit, was presented to a UK court in 2011, for Modi to stay on in the UK. Last year, Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj backed another request by him in the UK for urgent travel documents. The minister, whose husband and daughter have worked as lawyers for Modi, said her intervention was humanitarian, because he needed to travel to help his ailing wife. The two ministers are in a spot for supporting a man wanted in corruption cases in India.