New Delhi: Nirav Modi’s attempt to secure bail using arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari’s discharge from extradition judgement was rejected by the UK high court last week, which found the evidence provided by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) , objective.
This is the 10th time Modi’s bail plea was rejected by a UK court in the Punjab National Bank fraud (in which he defrauded the bank of ₹6,498 crore). He has been lodged at Wandsworth prison on the outskirts of London since March 19, 2019, after he was arrested based on India’s extradition request.
On February 28, a King’s bench division at the UK high court allowed Bhandari’s plea against his extradition to India, primarily on the grounds that he would be at real risk of extortion, torture or violence in Tihar jail, from other prisoners or prison officials.
Modi, in his fresh attempt to get bail, argued that the Bhandari judgement provides new “light of the end of the tunnel” for him and that same conclusion should now arise in his case as well.
The judge , Michael Fordham , while rejecting the argument, said in his order on May 15: “I am not able to place significant weight on this feature” while adding that unlike Modi’s plea (for bail), Bhandari’s was a case of prospective post-extradition police interrogation. HT has reviewed a copy of this order.
The ruling effectively shuts a door that appeared to have opened for fugitives such as Modi battling extradition to India after the Bhandari judgement.
Asserting that the conclusion reached by him to not grant bail to Modi was based on an objective assessment, Fordham said in his order : “To the contrary, I find that there are substantial grounds for believing that, if released by me on bail on the proposed conditions or any conditions that this Court can properly devise, the applicant would fail to surrender”.
“I have also been persuaded by Mr Hearn (Nicholas Hearn – Crown Prosecution Service lawyer representing India’s case) that there are substantial grounds for believing that, if released on bail conditions, the applicant would interfere with witnesses. As to that, I record that it is a secondary basis for my decision. The primary basis is the assessment of the risk of absconding,” the judge noted.
Through Hearn, CBI and ED – both had sent teams to London for the hearing – argued that if released on bail, Modi would have an incentive to abscond. The judge agreed to the Indian argument.
The Indian government also argued that if Nirav Modi is released, he can access the funds he siphoned off as he was the lead perpetrator in a fraud worth $1.015 billion of which only $ 405 million has been located while $600 million is yet to be found.
“These features of the evidence are, in my assessment, an evidenced and objective basis for the strong objective reasons to which I have referred, to consider that the Applicant would be able to access very considerable financial resources,” the high court judge said.
On India’s argument that Modi was responsible for actions in which witnesses were interfered with, and evidence was destroyed – February and March 2018 – like moving dummy directors to Cairo, destroying phones and computers in Dubai, when he was in the UK, the judge said in his order that this part is “objectively supported by evidence, which has all of these features: mobilisation; evasion; the use of associates; and actions crossing borders”.
On February 25, 2021, a district judge at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court ordered Modi’s extradition to India which was upheld by the UK high court on November 9, 2022. The high court also refused his plea to go to the Supreme Court against its decision, thereby exhausting his legal options.
Officials who didn’t want to be named said the extradition request is currently pending with the UK government due to certain confidential proceedings. This usually means a request for asylum.
