Chennai: Since Wednesday night, there have been reports in Indian media that fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya was being extradited to India.
“The fugitive businessman will be accompanied by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials. At the Mumbai Airport, a medical team will do his health check-up,” reports said.
They added that he will be produced before a court today. However, a senior official at the Indian High Commission in London has said that Mallya was not flying back on Wednesday night, or any time soon.
“There is no extradition happening as of now. The media have picked up an old statement of the CBI. The situation has not changed. There are delays,” the officer said.
Vijay Mallya recently lost his application seeking leave to appeal in the UK Supreme Court, in a setback for the embattled liquor tycoon who in April lost his High Court appeal against an extradition order to India on charges of fraud and money laundering related to unrecovered loans to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
India was in touch with the British government over extradition of Mallya after he exhausted legal options against New Delhi”s request to the UK to extradite him.
“The government of India is in touch with the UK regarding the next steps in his extradition process,” External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said recently.
He was replying to a question on Mallya’s extradition to India during an online media briefing. Mallya has been based in the UK since March 2016 and remains on bail on an extradition warrant executed three years ago by Scotland Yard on 18 April, 2017.
The High Court verdict in April upheld the 2018 ruling by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot at the end of a year-long extradition trial in December 2018 that the former Kingfisher Airlines boss had a ‘case to answer’ in the Indian courts.