Mehul Choksi Arrested: arrest was not easy!
Mehul Choksi, the main accused in the Rs 13,800 crore PNB fraud case, has been arrested in belgium and now preparations have been intensified to bring him to India. After escaping several times since he fled from india in 2018, he was now arrested on the request of indian agencies. 65-year-old Choksi was reportedly detained from a hospital in belgium, where he was admitted for treatment since last year.
red notice removed against Mehul
Investigating agencies, including the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), have intensified preparations to bring him back after the Interpol red notice against him was removed. A red notice is issued for a person who is wanted by a member country for a serious crime and other member countries are urged to help locate or arrest him.
Mehul's lawyer confirmed the arrest
The Belgian government had already confirmed Choksi's presence there. Especially, after the news of Choksi's sudden disappearance from Antigua in May 2021, the government there took the issue even more seriously. Talking about his arrest, Mehul's lawyer Vijay Agarwal said, "At present, he is in jail and there (Belgium) the process is not to file an application for bail but to file an appeal. During that appeal, it is requested that he should not be kept in custody and be allowed to defend himself and oppose the extradition request without being in custody."
This is how the fraud was done
Choksi, owner of Gitanjali Group, is the main accused in the case of defrauding India's second largest public sector bank PNB through fake letters of Undertaking (LOUs) and Foreign Credit letters (FLCs) allegedly in connivance with bank officials. Choksi's nephew Nirav Modi, another accused in the case, is currently lodged in a london jail. As part of the extradition request, indian authorities had shared at least two non-bailable warrants with their Belgian counterparts, issued by a special court in mumbai in 2018 and 2021. However, this is not the first time Mehul has been detained, but even before this Mehul was detained for illegal entry into Dominica. During that time a cbi team also tried to bring him to india, but later the court allowed him to return to Antigua for medical treatment.
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