Wanted diamond merchant Nirav Modi on Tuesday renewed his appeal in the High Court in London against being extradited to India to face charges of fraud and money laundering in the $2 billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case. The 50-year-old jeweler, who is behind bars at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London, lost the first stage of the High Court’s appeals process last week after a judge denied permission to appeal “on paper”.
Modi’s lawyers had five days to file a renewal application for an oral hearing in the matter allowing him to appeal against the extradition order given by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel on April 16. A court “has listed a renewal hearing for 21 July 2021,” the official confirmed on Tuesday.
In a brief hearing next month, a High Court judge will determine whether there is any ground for an appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision or the Westminster Magistrates’ Court ruling in favor of Modi’s extradition to India in February, a full hearing of the case. should proceed. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which appears in court on behalf of Indian authorities, has previously said it is looking forward to the next steps in the process. “We will oppose any appeal proceedings on behalf of the Government of India if they are allowed to appeal. [government of India],” the CPS said last month.
Meanwhile, Modi has been in jail since his arrest two years ago on March 19, 2019, and his repeated attempts for bail were rejected as he is considered a flight risk. In his ruling in February, District Judge Sam Goozy concluded that the diamond merchant has a case to answer before Indian courts and that the bar for extradition under UK law does not apply to his case. As part of a much broader judgment, the judge concluded that he is satisfied that there is evidence on which Nirav Modi can be convicted in connection with the conspiracy to defraud PNB.
“Prima facie the case is established,” he said with regard to all the charges leveled by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED), which include money laundering, intimidation of witnesses and disappearance of evidence. The court had also accepted that Modi’s mental health had deteriorated due to his prolonged imprisonment in a London prison, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, that his suicide risk did not meet the high threshold so that it to conclude that it would be “unjust or oppressive”. “To extradite him. Under assurances given by the Indian authorities in court, Modi is to be kept in Mumbai’s Barrack 12 Arthur Road Jail and provided necessary medical treatment if he is extradited to face trial in India. Modi is the subject of two sets of criminal proceedings, the CBI case relating to fraudulent obtaining of large-scale fraudulent undertakings (LoUs) or loan agreements on PNB, and the ED case relating to the laundering of proceeds of that fraud. of. He also faces two additional charges of “disappearing evidence” and criminal intimidation to threaten witnesses or cause death, which were added in the CBI case. “I do not accept the submissions that the NDM [Nirav Deepak Modi] Was involved in lawful business and using the LoU in a permissible manner, notes the magistrate court’s decision forwarded to the Home Secretary.
India is a designated Part 2 country based on the Extradition Act 2003, which means that it is the Cabinet Minister who has the authority to order the extradition of the requested person after considering all issues. The home secretary’s order rarely goes against the court’s findings, as he has to consider only very narrow bars for extradition, which is not applicable in Modi’s case. The case will now go through the next stage of the High Court’s appeal process, with Modi’s lawyers set to argue in favor of a full appeal hearing against the extradition order.
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