Team News Riveting
India’s effort to extradite fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya from the United Kingdom (UK) received a setback as a “secret legal” case is pending against him in the local court.
The UK authorities had informed India that fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya would not be extradited until the ongoing “secret legal” case was resolved in the country’s court.
“Now, we have been told that there is a secret legal matter and that his extradition cannot take place without its resolution… We are in touch with the UK government,” External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said at a media briefing.
Mallya, in May this year, lost his appeal against extradition in Britain’s Supreme Court. India has been pushing the UK authorities ever since to hand him over so that he can be tried for money laundering and fraud charges.
Srivastava said that the Indian government was in constant touch with the British administration since May’s verdict that left Mallya with no legal option available.
Earlier the Centre had told the apex court that though Mallya’s extradition case was in India’s favour, some ‘secret’ proceedings were on which it was not aware of.
The special bench of the Supreme Court, comprising Justice U U Lalit and Justice Ashok Bhushan, had asked Mallya’s legal counsel to explain the nature of the confidential proceedings. However, they denied to share any information and said that he would first have to take instructions on the issue.
Mallya had been staying in the UK since March 2016, but the May verdict was a major setback for him. It was expected that he could be brought back to India soon. But the legal tangle in the UK had changed the scenario.
