New Delhi: Belgium police arrested fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi on Saturday based on an extradition request filed by ED and CBI with the local authorities seeking his custody and deportation to face trial in India in a Rs 13,500 crore alleged banking fraud and money laundering case.
The arrest will ensure that Choksi remains in prison until the proceedings of his extradition are completed.
His nephew, Nirav Modi, has been in a London prison since 2019 when he was arrested at India’s instance on charges of fraud and escaping trial in India.
However, while the development marked a success of sorts for Indian agencies which have been trying hard to get Choksi back, the sense of satisfaction here was already getting tempered by the realisation that getting him extradited will be an uphill task.
Diamantiare Mehul Choksi has been arrested in Belgium, but given the recent UK court ruling, which referred to the revenge killing of gangster Tillu Tajpuria inside Tihar Jail, supposed to be a ‘maximum security prison’, to refuse India’s bid for Sanjay Bhandari, Belgium is likely to follow a similar course.
Belgian courts are not expected to be any less sensitive to ‘human rights issues’, increasingly being used as a stratagem by fugitives across geographies to avoid being brought to justice in the country where they committed the crime.
According to sources, ED had sent an extradition request for Choksi to Belgian authorities six months ago when it received information of the fugitive’s frequent presence in that country which eventually led to his arrest. Earlier, Choksi had managed to get a red corner notice against him dropped from Interpol claiming Indian authorities had tried to abduct him from Antigua, his adopted country where he has taken citizenship.
Determined to give it their best shot, a team of Indian prosecutors will soon follow up Choksi’s arrest with the local court in Belgium to extradite him. Agencies had the documentation ready, which was submitted along with the extradition request, including chargesheets filed against him in Indian courts and a non-bailable warrant issued for absconding and not being present for trial. Courts here have also taken cognisance of the criminal charges, one of the prime conditions in an extradition request.
Sources said ED was constantly monitoring Choksi’s movement in Antigua and Barbuda where he had taken refuge since he fled in Jan 2018 to escape Indian agencies which had begun to close in on him following disclosure of him defrauding Punjab National Bank along with Nirav Modi. An attempt in June 2021 to have him deported from Dominica, where he had landed in suspicious circumstances from Antigua, did not work and, later, led to Interpol dropping the red corner notice against him.
However, Choksi, who has been diagnosed with cancer, has been visiting Belgium frequently for treatment — something which led the agencies to move swiftly and file for his extradition. Earlier, he had tried to slip back to Antigua to escape detention but was admitted to a hospital and had to stay back, sources said.
While India has got a strong case against him, sources here agree that the extradition attempt will come down to the view that the Belgian court takes of the ‘condition of Indian prisons’ argument his lawyers are already invoking to contest extradition. In Bhandari’s case, the UK court had accepted his argument about torture and inhuman treatment in Indian prisons, as also the fact of trials being an inordinately long process. The UK HC also refused the Indian govt’s plea for filing an appeal in the Supreme Court there.
“This can become the SOP of the defence for all fugitives who have escaped to Europe or the Caribbean islands. They all will cite human rights violations and poor conditions of Indian prisons to escape deportation and face trial in India,” a senior official tracking the case said. Choksi’s lawyer Vijay Agarwal told news agencies that his appeal against extradition would be on the grounds that “he is not a flight risk, is extremely sick and undergoing treatment for cancer”. He said the case is a political one and prison conditions in India would certainly be highlighted while applying for bail.
As reported by TOI, ED had attached assets, including properties and diamond jewellery, in India and abroad worth Rs 2,564 crore belonging to Choksi and his family members in the past few years and had recently started proceedings to return the money recovered from the sale of these assets to banks.