LONDON: The high court of London has ordered extradition of fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi to India.
Nirav Modi is accused of fraud and money laundering that amounts to an estimated USD 2 billion in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) loan scam case.
Lord Justice Jeremy Stuart-Smith and Justice Robert Jay of the London high court delivered the verdict.
51-year-old businessman Nirav Modi is currently being lodged at the Wandsworth prison in south-east London.
Passing the order, the judges of the London high court stated that extraditing Nirav Modi back to India will not be unjust or oppressive.
Passing the verdict, the judges rejected fugitive Nirav Modi’s appeal against his extradition to India in the Rs 13,000 crore PNB scam case.
Modi is the subject of two sets of criminal proceedings – with the CBI case relating to a large-scale fraud upon PNB through the fraudulent obtaining of letters of undertaking (LoUs) or loan agreements, and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) case relating to the laundering of the proceeds of that fraud.
He also faces two additional charges of “causing the disappearance of evidence” and intimidating witnesses or “criminal intimidation to cause death”, which were added to the CBI case.