On Wikipedia, diamantaire Nirav Modi carries the unenviable status of being India's "most wanted". If this was the late 1990s, a notorious distinction of this kind would have landed him a berth in Suhaib Ilyasi's erstwhile crime show. In 2018, where TV news channels had replaced the Ilyasi potboiler, Mumbai-based Modi became a household name instead. Known for his eponymous jewellery brand, Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi were alleged to have spearheaded one of the biggest bank frauds in the history of the country, swindling the Punjab National Bank (PNB) to the tune of USD 1.8 billion. 

A new book, Flawed: The Rise and Fall of India's Diamond Mogul Nirav Modi (Hachette India) by Pavan C Lall offers an account on the man credited with creating India's first truly global luxury company, and the scandal that saw investigative agencies across three countries in his pursuit. "Modi may be dismissed by society as a person of no consequence now, but when he was here [in Mumbai] running his business—he was something of a buzzword," says Lall, a city-based business journalist. "A mysterious central character with a large-than-life game plan, an Indian business looking to go international and in some ways actually did, and a house-of-cards collapse that no one saw coming." It was the kind of story Lall wouldn't have wanted to give a miss.