Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: Leaving nothing to chance and ensure that fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, wanted in India for allegedly masterminding the Rs.13,500 crore scam involving Punjab National Bank (PNB), does not buy time or get benefits of any legal loopholes to skip his repatriation to India, the Antigua Police has launched a probe into his claims that he was ‘abducted’ from Antigua to Dominica on May 23.
Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne said that taking seriously a complaint filed by Choksi’s lawyers, the Royal Police Force started investigations into the alleged abduction of the accused to neighbouring Dominica, media reported on Monday.
He said that Choksi’s lawyers even gave the names of people, allegedly involved in the ‘abduction’ to the police commissioner Antigua News Room reported.
According to media reports, quoting the Associated Times, Opposition leader Lennox Linton’s claims that Choksi was brought to Dominica in a yacht, Calliope of Arne, at around 10 pm on May 23, also appeared far from the truth. Interestingly, Linton had been promised substantial sums by the Choksis for the next elections.
On the other hand, the Choksi family had said that Mehul was in Antigua until 5 pm on May 23, which made it impossible to cover a 120-mile distance in four to five hours to reach Dominica by 10 pm. One can only cover this distance in 12 to 13 hours, the report said.
According to the Customs document, the said boat had left Antigua at 10 am on May 23, whereas Choksi’s domestic staff had said that he was in his residence till 5 pm, which indicates that Choksi did not travel by boat which Linton is claiming.
Quoting unnamed doctors of the Dominica China Friendship Hospital, where Choksi is admitted, the report said that a nail injury cited by his lawyers is an old one while other bruises could be new and could have been caused by even by a “slight push”.
Choksi had mysteriously disappeared on May 23 from Antigua and Barbuda where he has been staying since 2018 as a citizen.
Two days later, he was detained from a beach in Dominica for illegal entry after a possible romantic escapade with his rumoured girlfriend.
His lawyers claimed that he was kidnapped from Jolly Harbour in Antigua by policemen looking Antiguan and Indian and taken to Dominica on a boat. Early rumours said he had left Antigua to reach Cuba via Dominica.
Choksi was brought before a Roseau magistrate, on the orders of the Dominica High Court, to answer charges of illegal entry where he pleaded not guilty but was denied bail. The court had adjourned the hearing of the habeas corpus petition filed by his lawyers.
Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi had fled India in the first week of January 2018, weeks before the Rs. 13,500 crore scam in the PNB rocked the Indian banking industry.
The duo allegedly bribed the officials of the state-run bank to get Letters of Undertaking (LoU) on the basis of which they availed loans from overseas banks which remained unpaid.
Modi escaped to Europe and was finally held in London where he is in jail, contesting his extradition to India. Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017, a few months before he fled India, where he had been staying since his escape from Delhi.
An eight-member, multi-agency team led by a CBI officer, which had reached the Caribbean island country by a chartered aircraft to bring Choksi back, returned recently to New Delhi in view of the possibly long-drawn-out legal battle. As soon as the courts and the government clear his repatriation to India, the team will bring him back.