PNB scam: Mehul Choksi “a flight risk”, says Dominica HC, denies bail
Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: After a magistrate rejected the bail application filed by absconding diamantaire Mehul Choksi recently, the Dominica High Court he had moved to get one also denied him bail, remarking that he is “a flight risk”.
This has paved the way for his eventual repatriation to India on whose request the Interpol had issued a Red Notice.
The HC is set to hear Choksi’s habeas corpus plea on June 14. If the court ruling goes against him, he may be deported from Dominica to India later this month.
Media reports from the Caribbean island nation said on Saturday that the High Court denied bail to the fugitive jeweller, main accused in the Rs.13,500 crore scam involving Punjab National Bank (PNB), for his illegal entry in Dominica after his disappearance on May 23 from neighbouring Antigua and Barbuda where he is staying as a citizen since 2018.
The HC concluded that he is a “flight risk”, that he did not have any ties with Dominica and that the court could not impose any conditions which will stop him from leaving the country, news outlet AntiguaNewsroom said.
Choksi was the promoter of Geetanjali Gems and other famous diamond brands in India had fled the country weeks before the bank fraud involving him and his nephew Nirav Modi surfaced. Modi is also fighting an extradition matter from a London jail in the same case.
Choksi, 62, who went missing on May 23 from Antigua and Barbuda, was detained in Dominica on May 25 for illegal entry after a possible romantic escapade with his rumoured girlfriend and sent to judicial custody. Ever since he has been trying to avert his possible deportation to India.
His lawyers claimed that he was kidnapped from Jolly Harbour in Antigua by policemen looking like Antiguan and Indian and brought to Dominica on a boat. From a hospital, he was brought on a wheelchair before a Roseau magistrate, on the orders of High Court Judge Bernie Stephenson, hearing Habeas Corpus matter, to answer charges of illegal entry where he pleaded not guilty. The magistrate had denied him bail.
His wife Priti, who is also under the scanner of the Indian agencies as one of the accused, claimed that Mehul had been honey-trapped by New Delhi using a Bulgarian woman, that he was bundled out of Antigua to Dominica where he was arrested for illegal entry. This eased his deportation to India.
