CBI judge rejects Nirav Modi’s sister’s plea, says accused can’t dictate probe

Purvi has been listed as accused no. 31 in CBI’s second supplementary charge sheet. Like her husband, she had earlier applied to become an approver in the case

A Mumbai court has rejected a request by Purvi Modi, sister of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi, to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation via video conference, observing that her physical presence was necessary for detailed questioning and confrontation with the “voluminous” documents, accounts and transactions involved in the case.

CBI judge rejects Nirav Modi’s sister’s plea, says accused can’t dictate probe

Purvi has been listed as accused no. 31 in CBI’s second supplementary charge sheet. She had earlier applied to become an approver in the case, like her husband, Maiank Mehta.

In his order on Monday, special CBI judge SK Karhale noted that Purvi, a Belgian citizen, had failed to respond to a notice issued by the investigating officer in June 2022.

This, the court said, prima facie showed that she had not cooperated with the investigation. The judge also stressed that under Indian criminal law, the investigating officer (IO) of a case exercises complete control over its investigation and “an accused or an approver cannot dictate how the IO should conduct the investigation.”

In his request, Purvi told the court that she was settled in Belgium and had been cooperating with the agency. Her lawyer argued that the law and the rules of the high court and the CBI manual permitted statements to be recorded through video conferencing.

CBI opposed the request, saying Purvi was a beneficiary of the alleged fraud and hadn’t cooperated with the investigation. The agency said it wanted to question her in person and that provisions allowing video conferencing did not give her a right to insist on being examined remotely.

The court agreed with the CBI. “In these kinds of serious cases, when the Investigating Officer is insisting on physical presence of the proposed accused, Mrs Purvi Modi, because of her crucial role in the alleged crime, the opportunity of making a fair investigation has to be given to him,” the court said.

Nirav Modi is the prime accused in the ₹13,850 crore fraud at PNB and was declared a fugitive economic offender in December 2019. Modi and his uncle, Mehul Choksi, are accused of defrauding PNB by obtaining fraudulent LoUs, enabling them to secure overseas loans without proper collateral.

The fraud, uncovered in 2018, allegedly involved officials from PNB’s Brady House branch in Mumbai who issued the unauthorised LoUs to Modi’s firms. The total loss to PNB was estimated at ₹6,498 crore. The transactions went unnoticed for several years due to collusion by bank officials. Modi, the mastermind behind the PNB scam, has been fighting his extradition process from the UK, where the authorities arrested him in 2019.

The judge pointed to the scale of the case, noting that it involves thousands of crores of rupees and a large volume of documents, accounts, entries and transactions.

Purvi’s physical presence was “just, fair and reasonable,” the court said, as it would allow investigators to confront her with the material, which requires detailed interrogation.

The court also noted that Nirav Modi’s brother Neeshal Modi is another accused and a Belgian citizen. Belgium has rejected the CBI’s plea for his extradition, citing restrictions on extraditing its citizens for offences committed in other countries.