The Westminster Magistrates’ Court hearing the extradition case of Vijay Mallya has set March 16 as the next date when the admissibility of documents submitted by India to substantiate its case will be discussed.
At the last hearing on January 12, Mallya — wanted in India for alleged financial irregularities — was bailed till April 2. At that hearing, his lawyer Claire Montgomery had objected to the admissibility of the documents on various grounds.
The documents, submitted on India’s behalf by Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer Mark Summers related to an IDBI loan and was part of what he called “chapters of dishonesty” on Mallya’s part – a claim strongly refuted by Montgomery.
At the March 16 hearing, Summers is expected to refute Montgomery’s arguments against the documents’ admissibility, with a ruling on it by chief magistrate Emma Arbuthnot likely to follow.
A CPS spokesman said: “The next date for Vijay Mallya is for legal argument regarding admissibility of evidence, and is listed at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on March 16… The judgement will most likely be in May.”
At the January 12 hearing, Montgomery said that since the CBI was allegedly used in political cases, the behaviour of its officers was not reliable and they had failed to present supporting evidence to their charges against Mallya.
{{/usCountry}}At the January 12 hearing, Montgomery said that since the CBI was allegedly used in political cases, the behaviour of its officers was not reliable and they had failed to present supporting evidence to their charges against Mallya.
{{/usCountry}}She particularly picked several holes in 12 witness statements submitted by India and said they had identical spelling mistakes, unintelligible passages, and parts were repeated verbatim.
“They seem to be someone else’s assertions...there seems to be a preconceived desire to blame the applicant when no evidence existed,” she said and added that parts were repeated in a cut-and-paste manner in the statements.