Vijay Mallya leaves a court in London. (File)Embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya’s application to appeal against his extradition to India will come up for an oral hearing in the UK High Court on Tuesday. The development comes after Mallya’s written application for permission to appeal against his extradition was rejected by the court in April.
A two-judge bench of the Administrative Court division of the Royal Courts of Justice in London will hear Mallya’s application filed in April, where he had appealed against the decision of UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid to extradite him to India.
The judges are likely to reserve their judgment in the case and give their verdict in the coming weeks.
The 62-year-old, owner of the defunct Kingfisher Airlines, is wanted for wilful default of over Rs 9,000 crore loan from Indian banks. Mallya is facing charges of fraud, money laundering and violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act (FEMA) in India.
If the judges — George Leggatt and Andrew Popplewell — turn down Mallya’s appeal, he must be extradited within 28 days from the appeal decision becoming final. However, if he is granted permission to appeal, the case will then proceed to a full hearing stage at the UK High Court.
EXPLAINED | The cases against Vijay Mallya
“The right to appeal against an extradition order is not straightforward. His defence will have to prove fairly strong grounds to convince the judges to grant an appeal,” PTI quoted Toby Cadman, a UK-based barrister, as saying.
There is a final recourse for Mallya to approach the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) based in Strasbourg, France, to argue against his extradition to India on human rights grounds by trying to prove a real threat of harm or torture or that he would not receive a fair trial.
Following a year-long extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London last December, Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot had found “clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of the loan funds” and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a conspiracy to launder money against Mallya.
The court had also dismissed any bars to extradition on the grounds of the prison conditions under which the businessman would be held as the judge accepted the Indian government’s assurances that he would receive all necessary medical care at Barrack 12 in Mumbai’s Arthur Road Jail.
(With PTI inputs)
