NEW DELHI: India's eight-year effort to get custody of fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, accused in a Rs 13,850 crore scam, gained momentum after a Belgian court ruled that his extradition has no legal barrier and the “charges against him are serious enough to justify it”.
The agencies have also submitted pictures of Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail, specifically Barrack No 12, to Belgian court where Choksi will be held once extradited.
It is 46-square-metre barrack, which has two cells with private toilets and basic facilities. The images were shared to counter Choksi’s claims that Indian prisons are overcrowded and unsafe.
The agencies – Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) – were following the fugitive since it fled from the country on January 2, 2018.
The court's order stated that Choksi is not a Belgian citizen but a foreign national. He was arrested in Antwerp on April 11, 2025 on request of the Indian agencies.
“The offences cited by India - including fraud, forgery, document falsification, and corruption - are also considered crimes under Belgian law. The cases registered in India fall under sections 120B, 201, 409, 420, and 477A of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), as well as sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act, all of which carry imprisonment of more than one year,” the court order stated.
The court recognized the offences, including criminal organisation, swindle, embezzlement and forgery, under Articles 66, 196, 197, 213, 240, 241, 245, 246, 247 SSSS2-4, 324a-b, and 496 of the Belgian Criminal Code.
The Court of Appeal rejecting the fugitive claims of political persecution and ensuring he faces trial in the fraud case. The court stated the offences "cannot be considered political, military or non-extraditable tax offences" and that “there are no grounds to believe that the request was made with the intention of prosecuting or punishing a person on the grounds of his race, religion, nationality, or political affiliation.”
He had asserted that he had been kidnapped from Antigua by Indian agencies to which court noted that “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 court also dismissed Choksi's claims that judiciary in India lacks independence and that media coverage would prevent a fair trial, saying such fears were unfounded.
Interpol, in November 2022, had dropped red corner notice against Choksi after he claimed Indian agencies had tried to abduct him from Antigua, his adopted country where he has taken citizenship. It was with the help of R&AW, the ED sent a request to Belgium authorities to arrest Choksi even as he was not on red corner notice.
On May 23, 2021, Choksi was arrested 23 in Dominica for illegal entry, after going missing from Antigua and Barbuda where he had been living since 2018. Following his arrest, he was declared as a prohibited immigrant by the Ministry of Immigration in Dominica. He had alleged that Choksi he was kidnapped from Antigua and Barbuda and forcibly brought to Dominica by Indian men.
Choksi owned of Gitanjali Group, a retail jewellery firm with 4,000 stores in India. He along with his nephews Nirav Modi and Neeshal Modi colluded with the PNB Bank officials to defraud the bank of over Rs 13,850 crore.
The scam is said to be one of the biggest in India’s banking history. PNB Bank officials at the Brady House branch in Fort, Mumbai issued fake Letters of Undertaking (LoUs). The LoUs were opened in favour of branches of Indian banks for the import of pearls for a period of one year, for which Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines lay out a total time period of 90 days from the date of shipment.
The guidelines were ignored by overseas branches of Indian banks. They failed to share any document/information with PNB, which was made available to them by the firms at the time of availing credit from them. The CBI had registered a case against them on the complaint of PNB but by that time all of them had fled the country.
