Nirav Modi was convicted in the Rs 13,500 crore PNB fraud case, where it was alleged that businesses under his control benefited from the bank issuing false letters of undertaking.
In the Punjab National Bank (PNB) loan scandal case, the High Court in London on Wednesday rejected the plea of fugitive diamond trader Nirav Modi and ordered his extradition to India to face allegations of fraud and money laundering totaling an estimated USD 2 billion.
Lord Justice Jeremy Stuart-Smith and Justice Robert Jay, who presided over the appeal hearing earlier this year, gave the judgement.
Modi, who is still detained at Wands worth Prison in south-east London, was given permission to challenge the Westminster Magistrates’ Court decision in February that supported extradition. The grounds for the 51-year-appeal old’s were related to his mental health.
To hear arguments about whether it would be “unjust or oppressive” to extradite Modi given his mental state, the High Court granted leave to appeal on two grounds: under Article 3 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and Section 91 of the Extradition Act 2003, which also dealt with mental illness.
In the UK, Modi is currently the subject of extradition proceedings. He was charged in the alleged Rs 13,500 crore PNB fraud case, where it was alleged that businesses under his control had benefitted from the bank’s issue of false letters of undertaking. In the CBI case, two more accusations of “causing the loss of evidence” and “criminal intimidation to cause death” against him were added.
