New Delhi: The son of Christian Michel, a British citizen implicated in the AgustaWestland helicopter case, has alleged that the Indian government is subjecting his father to “torture” through unjustified detention and depriving him of any means to communicate with his family.
Alios Michel, in a written statement, said, “We are in the dark about his current health and morale, only being conscious that these can only deteriorate with time. My sister, now a grown-up woman, has not seen her father since she was 14. I cannot think of any other word for this condition other than “torture”.”
Christian was extradited to India from Dubai in 2018 after which he was interrogated “day and night” by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) “without being allowed to sleep” according to his lawyer and Supreme Court advocate Aljo Joseph.
Christian has been in prison for five years without receiving a trial. The Supreme Court on March 18 refused to hear a fresh bail plea filed by him.
“He has neither been tried nor has he been found guilty even after 63 months in incarceration, which exceeds the expected time for such condemnation, underlining the ridiculousness of this case,” Alio said.
The British national has written to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and the former occupant of the position, Boris Johnson, to seek relief on several occasions, but to no avail.
Also read: Christian Michel Has Spent Five Years in Tihar Jail But There’s No Word on When His Trial Will Begin
“My father has written to British Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak seeking their intervention; but without any response or reaction on their part – an intolerable attitude towards one of their own nationals! As a family, we have attempted to call on officials of the British Foreign Office to discuss my father’s extraordinary case. Unfortunately, Whitehall’s diplomats haven’t found the time to meet us,” Alios’s statement read.
Alios said that he feared the government may take retributive action against Christian in light of his family’s attempts to draw attention to his father’s plight “especially acknowledging the upcoming elections in India in which the elected party would gladly like this affair to be silenced in such delicate times.”
Background
The AgustaWestland case revolves around a 2007 agreement for the procurement of 12 luxury helicopters intended for use by high-ranking officials such as the president, prime minister, and former prime ministers.
In 2014, the Congress-led government had terminated the contract amidst accusations that the supplier, AgustaWestland, a subsidiary of Finmeccanica, purportedly engaged in bribery both in Italy and India.
“Executives of this firm were charged with corruption connected with the contract in Italy. But were finally acquitted by a superior court in May 2019, after two lower courts held them as innocent in December 2016 and January 2018. In the same judicial process Michel was wholly exonerated, with one of the judges remarking that the insinuation against him was ‘a hypothesis’ or in effect not a serious allegation.
The Indian government was a party to the court proceedings in Italy and therefore obliged to honour the verdict. However, with a change of government in India in 2014, the Bharatiya Janata Party regime led by Narendra Modi ignored the Italian judgement and began pursuing Christian Michel who was based in Dubai in order to falsely implicate Mrs Gandhi in the matter,” Joseph alleged.
While the UAE had earlier rejected the Indian government’s plea to extradite Christian, he was sent to India in an alleged quid pro quo arrangement when Prime Minister Modi brought Princess Latifa back to Dubai in 2018.
Christian was flown to India handcuffed and blindfolded by CBI officials, as per his lawyer’s statement.
‘Arbitrary’ detention?
Section 436A of the Indian Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPC) stipulates the maximum period of detention for an undertrial as ‘up to one-half of the maximum period of imprisonment’. If Michel had been found guilty under the offences for which he was extradited, the maximum sentence (under Section 420 IPC) given to him would have been seven years. This means he would have been eligible for discharge as an undertrial by now.
However, the CBI opposed this argument because, in a supplementary chargesheet, Michel was accused under Section 467 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), which carries a life sentence, if convicted. Joseph has maintained that Christian can only be tried for the offence mentioned in the Indian government’s application to extradite him. Hence, he argues the charges in the supplementary chargesheet are in violation of Section 21 of the Extradition Act, which upholds a ‘doctrine of speciality’, emphasising that no new charges can be added to the ones which constitute the basis of an extradition request.
‘Ploy to implicate Sonia Gandhi’
Joseph alleged that CBI officials met Christian in Dubai in 2010 and told him to sign a confession statement saying that “he had paid bribes to the president of the Congress party in India, Sonia Gandhi, to obtain an order for AgustaWestland (AW) helicopters.”
If he were to do so, then Christian would “only be called as a witness in the case” and no longer be an accused, the CBI officials allegedly told him.
“Christian refused to put his signature to the drafted document, for he has always maintained the allegation is untrue,” Joseph said.
In a letter to Sunak ahead of last year’s G20 summit in India, Christian wrote: “I am a political prisoner of Mr Modi” describing himself as ‘a judicial hostage of India’, adding that he ‘will never be taken to trial ever’.
