This network of nepotism has been established by the political class, not just the BJP, through which the elite protect and enrich themselves, salt away money from India, enjoy immunity from the law, harness power to promote their narrow interests and, ultimately, subvert democracy.

The seven days from 9 June to 15 June will go down in India’s political history as arguably the most ironic.

Alternatively, the seven days will be remembered for BJP stoking moral outrage over the fake degrees of a former AAP minister, Jitender Singh Tomar, but then doing a U-turn to defend the network of nepotism in which its own leaders are enmeshed.

This network of nepotism has been established by the political class, not just the BJP, through which the elite protect and enrich themselves, salt away money from India, enjoy immunity from the law, harness power to promote their narrow interests and, ultimately, subvert democracy.

The breathtaking spread of this network has been glimpsed this week. It includes not only Lalit Modi but also Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and her son Dushyant, Congress leaders now in the Opposition, and many others who remain in the shadow.

It’s the network linking cricket and its administrators to politicians, both brought together because of their lust for wealth, regardless of whether or not ill-gotten. This is the network which saw the rise of Lalit Modi from anonymity to notoriety, not the least because of his elite background. When the dragnet of law started closing in on him, he promptly left India or, as some would say, was allowed to escape. That was under the UPA government. Now, under the current NDA dispensation, an attempt had been made to make his life as normal as possible.

Contrast this treatment meted to Modi to that to Tomar, arrested for possessing fake degrees. Thirty-five policemen swooped on the former minister to detain him. The car in which he was driven to the police station had an ACP-rank officer at the wheel. He has been taken on a cross-country spree for determining the authenticity of his certificates – and, perhaps, quite rightly so.

Couldn’t the investigating agencies have treated Lalit Modi likewise? Ask another question please.

Nevertheless, securing fake degree isn’t quite in the league of crimes which Modi and his sponsors have allegedly committed. This isn’t to say the rule book shouldn’t be shown to Tomar. But then, the withering gaze of law should have scrutinised Modi as well.

Let’s face it – the differential punishment can only be explained by the fact that Tomar, unlike Modi, didn’t belong to the elite, and AAP isn’t, at least not yet, woven into their network of nepotism.

The life story of Lalit Modi can tell you the benefits and protection to those who are hooked into this network. A person is automatically hooked into this network in case he is born into a prominent industrialist family, as Modi was.

Son of industrialist KK Modi and grandson of Rai Bahadur Gujarmal Modi, who established the industrial township of Modinagar in western Uttar Pradesh, Lalit Modi, as is now well known, was booked for possession of cocaine, abduction and assault when he was a student of Duke University in the US. He entered a plea bargain, was fined and given a suspended two-year jail sentence.

However, he wasn’t jailed as he was, in return for providing 100 hours of community service and a cash bond of $50,000, placed on five years of probation, often granted to the first-time offenders. On graduation from Duke University, Modi moved the US court again, pleading he be allowed to return to India for reasons of health. He was allowed to fly back to India without doing community service.

Back in India, he annoyed his family because of his marriage to Minal Sagrani, whose first marriage had ended when her husband was jailed in a Gulf country. Minal was nine years senior to Modi. But neither her divorcee status nor the age difference between them was the problem. The Modis were opposed to the marriage because Minal was actually a friend of Lalit Modi’s mother and had often stayed at KK Modi’s residence in Delhi.

Ultimately, the marriage did take place, largely because of the intervention of Lalit Modi’s grandmother. The heartburn the betrothal caused in the family was testified to by his father, KK Modi. In an interview Papa Modi said, “He made it clear that he would marry only this friend of my wife, no one else.”

However, Lalit Modi was denied a direct role in the family business. He was given a car and an allowance and packed off to Mumbai, where he stayed in the apartment owned by Minal’s father.

But his marriage linked him into a network of NRIs. For one, Minal’s sister, Kavita, was married to Suresh Chellaram, who subsequently became part-owner of IPL team Rajasthan Royals. Karima, who is Minal’s daughter from her first marriage, married Gaurav Burman, who belongs to the Burman family, who own Dabur. The stepson-in-law was to later acquire a slice of online, digital and mobile rights of the IPL. Gaurav’s brother, Mohit, too become part-owner of Kings XI Punjab.

But these acquisitions by his relatives wouldn’t have taken place had Lalit not developed his own financial and political sinews. This is where the links between the Modis and the Scindias came in handy. It was Vasundhara Raje who accompanied Modi to Prime Minister Chandrashekhar in 1990-91 for the government's permission to establish a factory near Gwalior.

It isn’t known whether the permission was granted, but when Vasundhara Raje became chief minister of Rajasthan in 2003, Lalit shifted to Jaipur to stay at Prince’s Suite at the spiffy Rambagh Palace Hotel. He used his proximity to the chief minister to take over the Rajasthan Cricket Association – and through it became the youngest vice-president of the BCCI. Simultaneously, he was also the vice-president of the Punjab Cricket Association. He exploited the rivalry between Sharad Pawar and Jagmohan Dalmiya to become close to the former.

But his clout wasn’t confined to just cricket – he was thought to have been the principal architect of many controversial decisions of the Rajasthan government, from the liquor policy to change in land use rules. He slapped a constable who dared enter into his box at an IPL match, which nearly led to a police strike, and wrested control of two heritage havelis.

Against this backdrop, it isn’t surprising the Enforcement Directorate stumbled upon Modi buying shares in Vasundhara Raje’s son, Dushyant’s firm, Niyant Heritage Hotels Pvt Ltd, at an astonishing price. Nor should it surprise anyone that Vasundhara Raje accompanied Modi’s wife, Minal, to Portugal for treatment, nor that she might have given an affidavit to help Modi acquire long-term residential rights in the United Kingdom.

But what piques curiosity is why Modi has turned against Raje, evident from offhand disclosures about her. Perhaps he was miffed because she, in her second stint, had distanced herself from him, to insulate herself from the politically damaging impact of her relationship with him.

In doing so, Raje violated the iron-clad rule of the network – once in it, you can’t back out. The network clearly earmarks territories and their bosses. Poaching invites retribution.

This Congress leader Shashi Tharoor learnt this the hard way. Once hosted by Modi in Mumbai’s Four Season Hotel, both fell out when the now defunct Rendezvous Sports World (RSW) won the bid for an IPL franchise. The top bidder was Sahara, then sponsors of Team India, which pocketed the Pune franchise.

Modi wanted the other IPL team franchise to go to either Videocon Group or the Adanis of Gujarat, both of which had zeroed in on Ahmedabad as their hub. An Outlook magazine story quoted RSW insiders saying Modi had asked them to bid around $300 million, but they surprised him by upping it to $333 million, thus beating Videocon’s $319.90 m bid. Had they adhered to Modi’s suggestion, Videocon and Ahmedabad would have bagged the IPL franchise.

An angry Modi then went on to make disclosures about the sweat equity that Tharoor’s wife Sunanda Pushkar (she died in 2013) owned in RSW, leading to his ouster from the Union Ministry. It is just the kind of heat Modi has now turned on Raje.

From this perspective, it is Sushma Swaraj who is now popularly perceived to be helping Modi. Her husband and daughter have both been Modi’s lawyers. All relationships in this network are symbiotic. Also, the IPL-money-political linkages go far deeper and involve a great many more people than it will be ever revealed.

As for Tomar, well, he got his just desserts because he was neither born into nor belonged to this network. In stoking outrage over AAP’s fake degrees, the BJP believes people are so gullible that they wouldn’t look at its misdeeds, just because no policeman is waving a pair of manacles at their leaders.

(Ajaz Ashraf is a journalist from Delhi. His novel, The Hour Before Dawn, published by HarperCollins, is available in bookstores.