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UK court told how Nirav Modi threatened witnesses
Two videos showing witnesses recounting how they were threatened and passports confiscated allegedly at the behest of daimantaire Nirav Modi and his associates were played in the Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday as part of India’s extradition case.
Two videos showing witnesses recounting how they were threatened and passports confiscated allegedly at the behest of daimantaire Nirav Modi and his associates were played in the Westminster Magistrates Court on Tuesday as part of India’s extradition case.
Judge Samuel Mark Gozee viewed the videos in which the witnesses narrated in Hindi and English how they were intimidated, insisting that they were not under any duress to make the statements. The videos are part of India’s evidence submitted to the court against Modi.
The CBI has earlier filed supplementary chargesheets in an Indian court that Modi threatened to kill one of the directors of his company, Ashish Mohanbhai Lad, if he expressed a desire to return to India from Cairo.
According to CBI, Lad had fled from Dubai to Cairo to avoid arrest and in June 2018, when he planned to return to India from Cairo, he was contacted Modi’s behalf by his brother, Nehal Modi, and threatened.
The second day of the extradition trial began with Modi’s lawyer, Claire Montgomery, who appeared for businessman Vijay Mallya in his extradition case, set out broadly similar objections to Modi’s extradition.
According to her, there is no prima facie case against Modi; he faced risk to his human rights in the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai; and he may not receive a fair trial if extradited. Modi appeared in court via video-link from the Wandsworth jail.
Under the UK-India extradition treaty, the country requesting the extradition needs to establish in the requested country’s court that there is a prima facie case against the person – not a conviction – based on charges that would amount to offences in law in both countries.
Montgomery blamed “incompetence” of the Punjab National Bank for the way in which credit and loans were extended to Modi and his companies. She quoted extensively from bank documents from 2004, and at one stage accused PNB of misleading the Reserve Bank of India on lending.
Raising objections to documents submitted by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer Helen Malcolm, Montgomery claimed that many are inadmissible in court, she told judge Samuel Mark Goozee. There is “no underlying evidence” in India’s case, she added.
She said the witness statements submitted by India had the same ‘defect’ as in the Mallya case: that they were ‘copy and paste’ examples, which raised doubts about their provenance and the ways in which theyw re secured under Section 161 of India’s Code of Criminal Procedure.
The sovereign assurance given by the ministry of home affairs that Modi’s human rights would be protected in the Mumbai jail, she said, is “inadequate”, raising concerns about over-crowding, conditions, availability of medical facilities, and reminding the court that Modi faced “serious mental health issues.”
Modi is now the subject of two extradition requests; one processed by the CBI and the other by the Enforcement Directorate (ED). The CBI case relates to large-scale fraud upon PNB, through the fraudulent obtaining of Letters of Understanding (LOUs/loan agreements); the ED case relates to the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.
The additional offences relate to allegations that Modi interfered with the CBI investigation by “causing disappearance of evidence” and intimidating witnesses (”criminal intimidation to cause death”). They have not been joined to the CBI case, but will be dealt with at a separate later hearing likely in September.
