Narendra Modi is leveraging India’s weight and presence abroad in bringing several absconders to justice.

The Narendra Modi government Monday successfully won the right to extradite fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya to India from the UK, where he has been living for the last three years.

Last week, Delhi persuaded Dubai to deport businessman Rajeev Saxena, an accused in the Rs 3,600 crore AgustaWestland helicopter case, and lobbyist Deepak Talwar who allegedly misused Rs 90 crore brought in through the foreign funding route. They have since been arrested by the Enforcement Directorate.

In December, the alleged key middleman of the AgustaWestland deal, Christian Michel James, was extradited to India.

The Modi government is certainly leaving no stone unturned in sending out the“na khaaoonga, na khaane doonga” message. I will not be corrupt and I will not let anybody be corrupt, the Prime Minister had said early on in his tenure.

Certainly, the plot is thickening. The ED’s special prosecutor Davinder Pal Singh has told the court that it had got some documents from Mauritius detailing a link between Michel and Rajeev Saxena. Evidently, the ED has found “ownership/control” by Saxena of a company in which “proceeds of crime” were parked by a company owned by Michel.

And then, there are Mehul Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi, both of whom have been absconding for several months. Choksi is accused of defrauding PNB for over Rs 13,000 crore and has since taken citizenship of Antigua & Barbuda.

The government is putting its full weight behind extradition of both Choksi and Modi, with India’s high commissioner to Antigua & Barbuda V. Mahalingam saying that just because he has taken a foreign passport doesn’t mean that he is not an Indian citizen.

Meanwhile, Nirav Modi’s sprawling 33,000 square feet bungalow facing the sea in Alibaug, the playground of the rich in Maharashtra, has been demolished on orders of the government. Raigad district collector Suryawanshi has just discovered that the bungalow has violated coastal regulation zone norms.

As for the extradition of Vijay Mallya, it is certainly significant that the British home secretary has signed the file. Even if Mallya appeals in the high court and later in the supreme court, the fact is that the British government – pending the decision of its courts – has taken a political decision not to contest a request by the Modi government on Mallya.

The Mallya extradition is bound to have a ripple effect. If the PM’s determination to get the Big Four economic fugitives – Mallya, Michel, Modi and Choksi – back home pays off, it could have a big effect on an election that hardly seems to be going the Opposition’s way, at least at the moment.

The Mamata Banerjee Vs Modi standoff isn’t cutting any ice yet, even if it consolidates Bengal’s perception that Didi is being bullied. Priyanka Gandhi has just returned from abroad and will only now start campaigning in UP. Akhilesh Yadav and Behenji Mayawati are so quiet that you can hear a mouse roar.

Of course, things can change overnight. In an interview with ‘Sunday Guardian,’ Christian Michel, speaking through his lawyers, has said the CBI knows that he has never met or spoken to Sonia Gandhi or her son, Rahul, and has leaked false stories to the press.

But the CBI has now a new director, the mild-mannered R.K. Shukla, and he has been bumped up from Madhya Pradesh, where he was a police chief and where the BJP was in power for a full 15 years until it recently lost power.

Do you get the impression that the PM is tightening the noose? Certainly, he is leveraging India’s weight and presence abroad in bringing several absconders to justice.

Modi can certainly pat himself on the back for leading this effort. He will now hope that the rest of India also does the same.

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