While the country was smitten by the pre-Valentine wink of Priya Prakash Varrier, a débutante Malayalam actress, her 15 minutes of fame and court cases in tow, a Diamantaire (honestly I was hearing the term for the first time) did the same at India's banking system and law enforcement machinery, whose snores were quite deafening.
Nirav Modi, hitherto known only to uber rich diamond jewellery buyers, has now become a household name and hot topic at dinner table discussions and esoteric terms like LoU, Swift code becoming more commonplace.
His uncle Mehul Choksi was not well known but his Gitanjali Diamonds and Gili were a regular fixture at newspaper ads and advertisement hoardings dotting the cities.
The TDS weary, Aadhaar tethered middle class were left gawking when the king size life of Nirav Modi unfolded on their LED TV screens. The repeated footage of this baby-faced man in the company of gorgeous women dripping in diamonds wowed many hearts.
The man planned his flight well in advance and cocked a snook at the Indian law enforcement agencies. It would have been business as usual had the erring Punjab National Bank official not superannuated or his successor had agreed to play ball with them.
And once India's second largest public sector bank dropped the bombshell, TV news channels had to break out of their self imposed cocoon of playing lapdog and guard dog to the government of the day. These channels and their social media cells buckled up their armour with hashtags containing words such as 'loot', 'jewel thief' and the like, and got down to the wild goose chase with each channel claiming 'exclusives' of their reporters having spotted them at Hong Kong, New York and other locations.
All of them evoked just a long languid yawns as they hardly looked convincing. It was like Inspector Jacques Clouseau trying hard to look as effective as Sherlock Holmes. A while later it came to light that many well known media houses had refused to pursue allegations against Modi and Choksi, despite many red flags raised by whistle blowers.
Now the uncle-nephew duo has joined the growing illustrious group of elusive scoff laws, who are well ensconced at various foreign shores. Ironically some of them are reportedly in England, the home of our old colonisers East India Company.
Nirav Modi, hitherto known only to uber rich diamond jewellery buyers, has now become a household name and hot topic at dinner table discussions and esoteric terms like LoU, Swift code becoming more commonplace.
His uncle Mehul Choksi was not well known but his Gitanjali Diamonds and Gili were a regular fixture at newspaper ads and advertisement hoardings dotting the cities.
The TDS weary, Aadhaar tethered middle class were left gawking when the king size life of Nirav Modi unfolded on their LED TV screens. The repeated footage of this baby-faced man in the company of gorgeous women dripping in diamonds wowed many hearts.
The man planned his flight well in advance and cocked a snook at the Indian law enforcement agencies. It would have been business as usual had the erring Punjab National Bank official not superannuated or his successor had agreed to play ball with them.
And once India's second largest public sector bank dropped the bombshell, TV news channels had to break out of their self imposed cocoon of playing lapdog and guard dog to the government of the day. These channels and their social media cells buckled up their armour with hashtags containing words such as 'loot', 'jewel thief' and the like, and got down to the wild goose chase with each channel claiming 'exclusives' of their reporters having spotted them at Hong Kong, New York and other locations.
All of them evoked just a long languid yawns as they hardly looked convincing. It was like Inspector Jacques Clouseau trying hard to look as effective as Sherlock Holmes. A while later it came to light that many well known media houses had refused to pursue allegations against Modi and Choksi, despite many red flags raised by whistle blowers.
Now the uncle-nephew duo has joined the growing illustrious group of elusive scoff laws, who are well ensconced at various foreign shores. Ironically some of them are reportedly in England, the home of our old colonisers East India Company.
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