Mehul Choksi's wife's plea: Special court asks ED to file reply

A special court on Tuesday asked the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to file its reply on a plea filed by Priti Choksi, wife of fugitive jeweller Mehul Choksi, seeking cancellation of a bailable warrant issued against her. The court dealing with money-laundering cases also granted interim stay on the warrant until the next hearing.

Mehul Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi are accused of defrauding Punjab National Bank of more than ₹13,500 crore.

In a prosecution complaint filed in June last year, the ED had termed Priti Choksi as an "abettor" in a "money-laundering offence" allegedly masterminded by her husband.

While Nirav Modi is fighting his extradition plea in London, Mehul Choksi is currently residing in Antigua and Barbuda. The jeweller along with his wife took up the citizenship of the twin Caribbean-island nation after they fled India on January 4, 2018, days before the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case against Choksi, Nirav Modi and others.

In 2022, the Commonwealth of Dominica, an island nation to the south of Antigua and Barbuda dropped charges of illegal entry to its territory against Choksi. In his plaint, Choksi had claimed that he was abducted from Antigua and Barbuda, allegedly by Indian agents, and forcibly taken to Dominica in a yacht.