In a major attempt to bring back economic offenders who have taken refuge in the United Kingdom and are not being extradited despite losing legal re-courses, the Government of India has decided to send a joint team of officials to London to meet UK officials and bring back these fugitives to India.
The alleged criminals, who are on the radar of the team that comprises members of the Ministry of External Affairs, Enforcement Directorate, NIA and CBI, includes Vijay Mallya, Sanjay Bhandari and Nirav Modi. All these three individuals stand accused of looting public money.
Mallya had lost his appeal filed in the UK court against extradition to India in April 2020, while Bhandari lost his case in November 2022. Modi’s plea was refused in December 2022.
Despite this, the three individuals have not been sent back to India. This has been attributed to their financial and political resources, as Sunday Guardian, the sister concern of the Daily Guardian, had reported in January last year.
In November 2022 last year, a London court in its 107-page judgment, accepted the Government of India’s plea to extradite Bhandari , a notorious arms dealer. His extradition and subsequent questioning is likely to indict many serving and retired top officials and impact careers of political entities.
Sources in Delhi said that all these three individuals have exhausted all the legal remedies available to them and despite that they were not being extradited by the UK which suggests that they were getting help from local political entities.
Sources told this newspaper that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has raised this issue with his UK counterpart Rishi Sunak and his predecessor Boris Johson. The issue was reportedly also raised by defence minister Rajnath Singh during his recent visit to the United Kingdom.
It is believed that a sort of green signal was given by the UK administration to Singh following which it was decided to send the team from Delhi which will be equipped with all the information necessary to convince the members of the Sunak government.
PM Modi both in 2014 and 2019, during his campaigning, had stated that he was committed to bringing the economic offenders who had fled India, allegedly with the support of the previous Congress led UPA government, back.
The recent push by the Prime Minister’s Office is being seen as a step towards this direction.
The outcome of this step is likely to impact the ongoing Free Tax Agreement talks between the two countries, which are now in its final stage.