The Belgian court ruled that it has \u201cno obstacle” in sending the fugitive diamond trader and Punjab National Bank scam accused Mehul Choksi back to India. The court ruled that there is no legal barrier to Choksi\u2019s extradition to India.<\/p>\n
A Belgian court in Antwerp, on October 17, approved the extradition of Mehul Choksi to India in connection with Rs 13,500-crore Punjab National Bank fraud case. The court upheld the legality of his April arrest by Belgian authorities, marking a key advance in New Delhi\u2019s pursuit of the absconding jeweller.<\/p>\n
The court stated that Choksi is not a Belgian citizen but a foreign national, and the charges against him are serious enough to justify his extradition.<\/p>\n
According to the court\u2019s order, the offences cited by India \u2014 including fraud, forgery, document falsification, and corruption \u2014 are also considered crimes under Belgian law. The court observed that 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.<\/p>\n
The court further noted that Choksi\u2019s role in these offences could involve participation in a criminal gang, fraud, corruption, and the use of forged documents \u2014 all considered serious offences under Articles 66, 196, 197, 213, 240, 241, 245, 246, 247, and 496 of the Belgian Criminal Code.<\/p>\n
However, the court clarified that one of the charges from India \u2014 destruction of evidence (IPC Section 201) \u2014 is not recognised as a crime under Belgian law; hence, extradition cannot be granted on that specific count.<\/p>\n
The ruling stated that the alleged crimes took place between December 31, 2016, and January 1, 2019, and that the statute of limitations had not expired in either India or Belgium.<\/p>\n
Choksi had argued in court that he was allegedly abducted from Antigua and faced the threat of political persecution and inhumane treatment in India. But the court found no concrete evidence to support those claims.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Belgian court ruled that it has \u201cno obstacle” in sending the fugitive diamond trader and Punjab National Bank scam accused Mehul Choksi back to India. The court ruled that there is no legal barrier to Choksi\u2019s extradition to India. A Belgian court in Antwerp, on October 17, approved the extradition of Mehul Choksi to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13325,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-13324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13324"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13324\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13326,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13324\/revisions\/13326"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/13325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ncrfrontlinenews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}