28 July 1988. A 26-year-old man comes out after badminton practice from Lucknow's KD Singh Babu stadium. Two men shoot him dead.
The slain young man was no ordinary shuttler but one of the best players of the sport that India had seen, second in greatness to only Prakash Padukone, National champion throughout the 70s and the first Indian winner of the All-England Championship. Right from the age of eighteen when he qualified, Syed Modi won eight successive national championships and had lost the crown for the first time only that year. And he was married to another talented badminton player, Amita. She had given birth to a baby girl just two months earlier.
So who killed him and why?
Born in 1962 in Uttar Pradesh to a sugar mill worker and his homemaker wife as the youngest of eight children, Modi first became junior National champion at 14. He won the senior championships from 1980 through 87. He bagged the bronze at the Asiad and a gold at the Commonwealth Games, in 1982. He was given the Arjuna Award in 1980.
In 1978 Modi met Amita Kulkarni, a women's team player and fell in love with her. He was Muslim and she was Hindu. They married in 1984, defying the strong objections of their families. Professional jealousy, religious difference and other personal incompatibles began to raise their head in the marriage. Amita met Sanjay Singh, a rich Congress politician who was also a personal friend of first the late Sanjay Gandhi and now his brother the Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. Later he was to move away from him and help Gandhi's rival and royal scion V.P. Singh form the Janata Dal party. He was married to Garima Singh, a niece of V.P. Singh and they had two children. Modi had reasons to believe that his wife was having an affair with Singh. When Amita became pregnant, he was certain that it was not his child but Singh's. The child was born in May 1988 and given the Hindu name of Aakanksha. Modi's performance on the badminton court dipped and he failed to win the National title that year.
Two months later he was murdered.
Based on diaries and letters of the Modis seized by the police and on revelations by Mrs. Modi's maid, the love affair between Sanjay Singh and Amita Modi was confirmed. The duo was arrested along with outlaw-turned-politician Akhilesh Singh but released later for lack of evidence. Ram Jethmalani was their defense counsel. Shortly after that, Sanjay and Amita got married.
There was a small obstacle though.... Sanjay's wife Garima Singh. She filed a case in court as she was not divorced from her husband and wanted the court to declare his second marriage invalid as it was tantamount to bigamy. The marriage was invalidated. Sanjay Singh filed an appeal in the High Court, and also a fresh divorce petition in the district court. Both of these cases dragged on indefinitely. Meanwhile, he has been living in with Amita Modi. He also formally adopted Aakanksha as his daughter. In 2009, the Lucknow sessions court pronounced life sentence for the sole remaining accused Bhagwati Singh. Of the other accused killers, Akhilesh Singh was let off and Amar Bahadur Singh and Balai Singh had been shot dead while out on parole during the trial.
Sanjay Singh regained his political reputation which had taken a beating after the Modi murder. He became the Union Minister for Communications in 1990. He also introduced Amita Singh into politics. She represented the Amethi Assembly constituency as a BJP MLA in 2002. Later she won again in 2007 as a Congress legislator. She lost in 2012. She also lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2017 Assembly elections, she fought and lost against Garima Singh, who represented BJP. Interestingly both women had named Sanjay Singh as their 'spouse' in the declaration while filing nominations.
The feud for the inheritance of the ancestral palace where Sanjay and Amita now live continues. Garima's son Anant Vikram Singh has in recent years demanded a further CBI inquiry into the killing of Syed Modi.
Syed Modi lives on in his memorials like the stadium named after him by his former employer Railways in Gorakhpur and the 'Syed Modi Grand Prix' tournament organized by Badminton Association of India.
In 1991 Dev Anand made a movie called Sau Crore (100 crores) based on the story of Syed Modi. Raman Kapoor played the Modi character, Fatima Sheikh played the wife and Naseeruddin Shan the politician. Dev Anand himself appeared as the investigating officer.
Three decades have passed since the cold-blooded snuffing out of a national asset, an event that strangely remains a whodunit.
(2019)
The slain young man was no ordinary shuttler but one of the best players of the sport that India had seen, second in greatness to only Prakash Padukone, National champion throughout the 70s and the first Indian winner of the All-England Championship. Right from the age of eighteen when he qualified, Syed Modi won eight successive national championships and had lost the crown for the first time only that year. And he was married to another talented badminton player, Amita. She had given birth to a baby girl just two months earlier.
So who killed him and why?
Two months later he was murdered.
There was a small obstacle though.... Sanjay's wife Garima Singh. She filed a case in court as she was not divorced from her husband and wanted the court to declare his second marriage invalid as it was tantamount to bigamy. The marriage was invalidated. Sanjay Singh filed an appeal in the High Court, and also a fresh divorce petition in the district court. Both of these cases dragged on indefinitely. Meanwhile, he has been living in with Amita Modi. He also formally adopted Aakanksha as his daughter. In 2009, the Lucknow sessions court pronounced life sentence for the sole remaining accused Bhagwati Singh. Of the other accused killers, Akhilesh Singh was let off and Amar Bahadur Singh and Balai Singh had been shot dead while out on parole during the trial.
Sanjay Singh regained his political reputation which had taken a beating after the Modi murder. He became the Union Minister for Communications in 1990. He also introduced Amita Singh into politics. She represented the Amethi Assembly constituency as a BJP MLA in 2002. Later she won again in 2007 as a Congress legislator. She lost in 2012. She also lost the 2014 Lok Sabha elections. In the 2017 Assembly elections, she fought and lost against Garima Singh, who represented BJP. Interestingly both women had named Sanjay Singh as their 'spouse' in the declaration while filing nominations.
The feud for the inheritance of the ancestral palace where Sanjay and Amita now live continues. Garima's son Anant Vikram Singh has in recent years demanded a further CBI inquiry into the killing of Syed Modi.
(2019)
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