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A Belgian court’s ruling successful the extradition proceedings concerning Mehul Choksi, a premier accused successful the Punjab National Bank scam, is an important improvement successful India’s efforts to bring him backmost to look trial. Mr. Choksi, who had fled India successful 2018, has been the people of attempts by authorities to get him extradited since.
Mr. Choksi is detained successful Belgium connected India’s request. On Wednesday, a Belgium tribunal concluded that the documents provided by him were insufficient to show a hazard of ill-treatment upon extradition to India. It besides rejected his plea of imaginable mistreatment successful Indian prisons, observing that India has fixed aggregate assurances to Belgium regarding his information and situation arrangements.
If the extradition is successful, Mr. Choksi volition articulation a agelong database of economical offenders who relationship for much than a 3rd of each those extradited to India from each implicit the satellite implicit 2 decades.
The lawsuit involving Mr. Choksi is not the lone lawsuit wherever India seems to beryllium gaining an borderline this year. Last month, a delegation from the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service visited Tihar jailhouse to measure situation conditions. This was aimed astatine facilitating the extradition of persons accused of economical crimes from the U.K. to India, specified arsenic Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.
Extradition requests are initiated for cases nether investigation, nether trial, oregon for convicted criminals. India has signed extradition treaties with 48 countries/territories and has extradition arrangements with 12 countries.
Information obtained by The Hindu using the Right to Information shows that India has been stepping up efforts to unafraid the extradition of fugitives from overseas countries to look proceedings here. In the past 5 years, India has made 133 extradition requests. In 2024 alone, it made 39 requests — the highest successful the 2020-2024 period.
The illustration beneath shows the Extradition requests made by India
RTI information besides uncover that India received 79 requests from overseas countries seeking the extradition of fugitives, betwixt 2020 and 2024.
The illustration beneath shows the Extradition requests received by India
An investigation of persons extradited oregon deported by overseas governments to India since 2002 shows that 35% of them were sent backmost for economical offences specified arsenic fiscal fraud, cheating, and forgery. Christian Michel James was extradited from the UAE for economical offences successful the AgustaWestland chopper woody bribery case.
People accused of participating successful violent activities, for offences specified arsenic panic financing, and for ‘waging warfare against India’ accounted for 27.5% of each cases. This year, Tahawwur Rana, accused of being a cardinal conspirator successful the 26/11 Mumbai panic attacks, was extradited from the U.S to India.
Those accused of crimes specified arsenic execution oregon effort to execution accounted for 21.3% of each extraditions. Other offences listed by the External Affairs Ministry see drugs and intersexual offences.
The illustration below shows the offence-wise divided of radical extradited to India successful the 2002-2018 and the 2024-25 periods.
A country-wise investigation shows that India has secured the extradition of radical from astatine slightest 26 countries successful the 2002-2018 and the 2024-25 periods. The UAE and the U.S. accounted for 46% of each specified cases together, with astatine slightest 25 and 12 fugitives extradited from these countries successful the periods, respectively.
The illustration beneath shows the country-wise divided of persons extradited to India betwixt the 2002-2018 and the 2024-2025 periods
These conclusions are based connected information sourced done RTI requests for the 2020-2024 play and supplemented by information from Parliament Q&A for the 2002-2018 period. Data for peculiar offences and root countries could not beryllium ascertained for the 2019-2023 period.
