UK Home Secretary Approves Nirav Modi’s Extradition to India

Nirav Modi was arrested on an extradition warrant on 19 March 2019

File photo of Nirav Modi.

(Photo: The Quint)

The United Kingdom’s Home Secretary Priti Patel on Friday, 16 April, approved the extradition of fugitive billionaire Nirav Modi to India, reported ANI, citing a CBI official.

The 50-year-old, currently imprisoned at Wandsworth Prison in southwest London, has two weeks to apply for permission to appeal against the Home Secretary’s order in the High Court in London.

Previously, on 25 February, a UK extradition judge had ruled that fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, wanted in the over Rs 13,500-crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, can be extradited to India to stand trial.

District Judge Samuel Goozee, who had said that Modi has a case to answer for in India, said that the jeweller would not be denied justice if he is extradited.

Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are the main accused in the PNB scam and they both left India before the details of the fraud came to light in January 2018.

The case was based on PNB's complaint that the accused had hatched a criminal conspiracy to defraud the public sector bank by fraudulently issuing Letters of Undertaking.

Modi, who was arrested on an extradition warrant on 19 March 2019, is the subject of two separate sets of criminal proceedings, one a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case relating to a large-scale fraud upon PNB, and another, an Enforcement Directorate (ED) case relating to the laundering of the profits of that fraud.

The court, in February, had said that it was satisfied there is evidence that Modi could be convicted and that there were clearly links between him and other connivers including officials of PNB.

“Many of these are a matter for trial in India. I am satisfied again that there is evidence he could be convicted. Prima facie there is a case of money laundering,” the district judge had said.