Supreme Court adjourns till 13 August Vijay Mallya's plea challenging confiscation of properties

The Supreme Court on Friday adjourned the petition filed by fugitive economic offender Vijay Mallya challenging the confiscation of properties belonging to the companies owned by him and his family members by government agencies.

Supreme Court has adjourned the case related to Mallya’s petition to 13 August.

Supreme Court adjourns to 13 August, the petition filed by the fugitive economic offender, Vijay Mallya, challenging the confiscation of properties belonging to the companies owned by him & his family members, by government agencies. (File pic) pic.twitter.com/C59Er9UwPB

— ANI (@ANI) August 2, 2019

On 28 July, Mallya had moved the apex court seeking a stay on the confiscation of properties owned by him and his relatives.

In his plea, Mallya said that he wanted attachment of only those properties related to Kingfisher Airlines facing cases of alleged irregularities.

On 29 July, the Supreme Court had agreed to hear on 2 August (today) Mallya’s plea.

A bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi took note of the submission of F S Nariman, appearing for Mallya, that the fresh plea be heard along with the pending one on the legality of the law and action to confiscate properties.

Mallya, who is currently in the UK, has been charged by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) of defaulting on bank loans to the tune of Rs 9,000 crore. He is also facing an extradition trial in the UK.

On 18 July, Mallya’s appeal in the UK High Court against his extradition order had been listed for a three-day hearing from 11 February next year, the UK court said.

The 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss had won a reprieve earlier in July when a two-judge panel at the Royal Courts of Justice in London granted him permission to appeal against the extradition order of a lower court to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crores in India.

In April this year, Mallya had failed to convince a UK High Court to dismiss an order related to money in one of his London bank accounts, dealing a blow to the embattled liquor tycoon’s efforts to prevent a consortium of Indian banks getting access to nearly 260,000 pounds.

In one of the many legal cases faced by the 63-year-old former liquor tycoon in the UK, Master David Cook ruled that an interim debt order in favour of State Bank of India (SBI) and other banks seeking access to funds in the ICICI UK bank account “should remain in force”. However, he said, to make the application final, it should be adjourned until after the hearing of Mallya’s pending bankruptcy petition.

--With inputs from agencies