Mumbai: A day after a Belgian court denied him liberty, an Indian lawyer of Mehul Choksi said they would renew his bail plea soon.
“As we were recently served with the extradition request from India, we shall be renewing the plea for bail shortly with more material, as there are a lot of holes in the extradition request sent, as well as a lot of concealments,” said Advocate Vijay Agrawal, Choksi’s lawyer in Delhi.
Earlier this week, a court in Belgium, where Choksi (65) was arrested on April 12, denied him bail. Agrawal said Choksi was in Belgium for medical treatment and was not a flight risk, one of the grounds on which his bail plea was opposed.
In 2018, the CBI filed a case against diamantaire Nirav Modi, his uncle Mehul Choksi, and others in an alleged Rs 13,000 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) loan fraud. Modi, his wife, Ami, a US citizen, brother, Nishal, a Belgian, and Choksi, promoter of the Gitanjali Group, went out of India in Jan before an FIR was registered on Jan 31 by the PNB with the CBI.
There are four separate bank fraud CBI FIRs against Choksi, based on which the Enforcement Directorate also booked him for a separate money laundering case and attached his and his associates’ assets worth Rs 2,566 crore, most of which were attached in the first case registered in 2018.