Fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi to be extradited to India to stand trial, rules UK court

New Delhi: A UK court on Thursday (February 25, 2021) ordered the extradition of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi and accepted the Indian case that he threatened witnesses and tampered with evidence.

After a nearly a two-year-long legal battle, the District Judge Samuel Goozee at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court also accepted the prima facie evidence against Modi for money laundering.

“Many of these are a matter for trial in India. I am satisfied again that there is evidence he could be convicted,” the court was quoted as saying by ANI.

Nirav Modi, who is behind bars in a London prison on charges of fraud and money laundering in the estimated $2-billion Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam case.

Modi is the subject of two sets of criminal proceedings, with the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) case relating to a large-scale fraud upon PNB through the fraudulent obtaining of letters of undertaking (LoUs) or loan agreements, and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case relating to the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.

Nirav Modi was arrested on an extradition warrant on March 19, 2019, and has appeared via videolink from Wandsworth Prison for a series of court hearings in the extradition case. His multiple attempts at seeking bail have been repeatedly turned down, both at the Magistrates’ and High Court level, as he was deemed a flight risk.