Belgium Court Rules in Favour of Extraditing Mehul Choksi to India in CBI Case
New Delhi: In what can be considered India's first stroke of success in the ongoing extradition proceedings against Mehul Choksi in Belgium, the Court of Appeals in Antwerp, after a hearing, has issued a Preliminary Judgment today rejecting Choksi’s appeal against his extradition.
This can be considered the first step towards his extradition, although Choksi is free to appeal against this order before the Belgian Supreme Court in the next 15 days.
Choksi was provisionally arrested on April 11 this year in Antwerp on the extradition request of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and has been in the Antwerp Prison in Belgium since then. Multiple bail petitions of his have been rejected since April this year.
The CBI has chargesheeted Choksi in a Rs 6,400-crore bank fraud. The broader case concerns a Rs 13,000-crore fraud at the Punjab National Bank in which his nephew Nirav Modi is involved. Modi is lodged in a London jail.
Holding that Choksi has not disputed his lack of Belgian citizenship, the order establishes that he thus falls under the definition of 'foreign national' as codified in the country's Extradition Act of March 15, 1874.
The order notes that Choksi's offences shall be punishable under sections of the law of the requesting state – India – which also find resonance in Belgian law under sections relevant to criminal organisation, swindling, embezzlement, misappropriation and embezzlement by public office holders and bribes, and forgery and use of forged documents.
The order notes that the offences which occurred in India between December 2016 and January 2019 "cannot be considered to be a political, military or non-extraditable tax offence and there are no grounds to believe that the request for extradition was made with the intention of prosecuting or punishing a person on the grounds of his race, religion, nationality or political affiliation nor does the position of the person appear to be adversely affected for any of these reasons."
The order also said, "It cannot be inferred from the documents supplied by the person concerned that he was kidnapped in Antigua on the instructions of the Indian authorities.The decision of the CCF of 12 October 2022 is inconclusive and very cautious and worded in a conditional manner."
The court order held that Indian authorities have noted that in the event of Choksi's extradition, he will be locked up in the Arthur Road Prison in Mumbai and will be at the disposal of the judicial courts in India and not of the investigating agency.
"In the opinion of the indictment chamber, the person concerned does not provide any substantial ground to believe that there is a real risk that, following his extradition, the person would face a serious risk of being subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment," the court said.
Note: This report was updated since publication with details of the court order.
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