New Delhi: Fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi, who has been detained in Dominica for “illegal entry”, might have taken his girlfriend on a romantic trip and got caught, claimed Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Browne on Sunday. The development comes amid claims of Choksi’s extradition to India.
“Antiguan Prime Minister Gaston Browne has said that diamantaire Mehul Choksi might have taken his girlfriend on a romantic trip to Dominica and got caught,” the Antigua News Room reported.
Earlier today, Antigua and Barbuda PM had claimed that India sent a private jet to Douglas-Charles airport in Dominica carrying documents related to the deportation of the fugitive businessman. However, there was no immediate official confirmation from Indian authorities about it. This led to speculations about the extradition of Choksi who was detained in the Caribbean island nation after his mysterious disappearance from neighbouring Antigua and Barbuda.
Publicly available data of Qatar Executive flight A7CEE shows that it left the Delhi airport at 3.44 pm on May 28 and reached Dominica at 13.16 local time on the same day, via Madrid.
Choksi has alleged that he was abducted from Jolly Harbour in Antigua and Barbuda by policemen looking like Antiguan and Indian and taken to Dominica. Purported pictures of 62-year-old Choksi surfaced in Dominica that showed him with a red swollen eye and bruises on his hands.
Meanwhile, the Dominica High Court has stayed the removal of Choksi from its soil and put a gag order on the developments till the matter is heard in an open court on June 2.
Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi are wanted for allegedly siphoning Rs 13,500 crore of public money from the state-run Punjab National Bank (PNB) using letters of undertaking. While Modi is in a London prison after being repeatedly denied bail and is contesting his extradition to India, Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 using the Citizenship by Investment programme before fleeing India in the first week of January 2018.
The scam came to light subsequently. Both are facing a CBI probe.