Kriti Agrawal
Nirav Modi, the fugitive diamond merchant whose extradition to India was ordered last month by UK Home Secretary Priti Patel in the estimated USD 2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case, has filed an application in the High Court in London for permission to appeal the order.
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) announced an appeal had been filed, but a High Court Judge who will rule on the case has yet to be appointed.
In the first place, a High Court Judge will rule on the papers submitted for the appeal, determining if there are any grounds for an appeal against the Home Secretary’s decision or the Westminster Magistrates Court February ruling in favour of Modi’s extradition to India to face fraud and money laundering charges.
Following the ruling, the defence party has the option of requesting an oral hearing to present their case. There are no set timelines for the legal proceedings, which may take months.
Meanwhile, Modi, 50, has been imprisoned at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London since his detention on March 19, 2019.
District Judge Sam Goozee ruled in February that the diamond merchant has a case to address in Indian Courts and that the extradition bars under UK law do not apply in his case.
The Judge ruled, as part of a lengthy decision, that there is evidence on which Modi could be convicted in relation to the attempt to defraud the PNB.
The Court also agreed that, while Modi’s mental health had deteriorated due to his prolonged imprisonment in a London jail, which had been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic, his risk of suicide did not reach the high threshold required to conclude that extraditing him would be unjust or oppressive.
Modi is the target of two sets of criminal proceedings, one involving a large-scale fraud against PNB through the fraudulent obtaining of letters of undertaking or loan agreements, and the other involving the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.
In addition to the CBI case, he faces two additional charges of causing the loss of evidence and threatening witnesses, or criminal intimidation to cause death.