Where is Najeeb? : And Other Stories of Unsolved Crimes by Prabuddh Banerjee

Author:Prabuddh Banerjee [Banerjee, Prabuddh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Notion Press
Published: 2021-08-17T18:30:00+00:00

Chapter Five

A Murder Without a Motive

Syed Modi’s murder case has all the ingredients of a Bollywood potboiler- Love, Betrayal, Intrigue, Passion, and Crime surrounding the death of a sports icon. It was a murder committed without any motive.

Two rising badminton stars, one Hindu the other one Muslim, fall in love and, against all odds, get married. A country boy who grew to be the country’s badminton superstar. His off-court love affair and marriage to another player of repute. An ambitious scion of a royal lineage whose political aspirations and closeness to the prime minister became controversial as his reputed ways with women. Some mysterious characters, including the lady’s mother, seemed to be advising her daughter on keeping the three-cornered relationship going. And a brutally climactic murder that stunned the country an eternal triangle that had gone wrong.

A Star-Crossed Life

A promising world champion was sacrificed at the altar of passion. Then, when Modi was only 26, his life was abruptly cut short by hired killers. The couple had a daughter of two months at the time of his death. Welcome to the sordid tale of Syed Modi’s life and murder.

Syed Modi was a rising star, and in a short time, he had scaled great heights in his sporting career. Syed Modi had won a gold medal in the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane in 1984 and a bronze medal in the Asian Games in 1982. Moreover, from 1980 to 1988, he was an eight-time National Badminton champion. In fact, in 1987, he had defeated legendary Prakash Padukone to win the national championship.

Syed Modi was born in Sardarnagar near Chauri Chaura* in Gorakhpur district in 1962 in an impoverished family. While playing the junior tournament in Bombay, his name was wrongly spelt, and the name stuck. But he disentangled himself from poverty through his exemplary skill as a badminton player. He won the junior national championship in 1976 when he was only fourteen and became national champion at the age of eighteen, beating great Prakash Padukone, who was at his peak. Who knows, had his life was cut short, perhaps India would have had another All-England champion in the annals of Indian badminton? He was born Syed Mehdi.

His rise was meteoric in the international badminton circuit. He won the national championship for consecutive eight years from 1980 to 1987. He won the Austrian International in 1983 and ‘84, singles bronze in the ‘82 Asian Games, and received the Arjuna Award in 1981. At the 1982 Commonwealth Games, he beat England’s Nick Yates, 7-15, 15-5, and 15-7, to win the Men’s singles title. His game displayed a mix of stylist Suresh Goel, of whom he was a protégé. He was poised to reach an even greater height, but his badminton career was mercilessly cut short by a brutal murder.

Love at First Sight

As the junior national champion, he participated in the Third Asian Invitation Championship in Beijing in 1978. He met a Bombay girl who had come with the women’s team named Ameeta Kulkarni. An intimacy developed among them, but they met a significant hurdle.

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