Vijay Mallya extradition case: Westminster's magistrate court in London to resume hearing today

The Westminster’s magistrate court in London will resume hearing the extradition case against Vijay Mallya on Friday. Mallya is wanted in a Rs 9,000 crore fraud and money laundering case in India. According to  reports, India is set to argue that statements recorded by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) under Section 161 of Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) against the businessman are admissible. [caption id=“attachment_2716932” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of Vijay Mallya. AFP[/caption] According to a  The Times of India report, “Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) lawyer Mark Summers, who is representing CBI and the Enforcement Directorate in the Westminster’s Magistrate Court, is also likely to inform the court that the businessman committed the crime under the UK Fraud Act, 2006.” Summers is also likely to allege that “Mallya lied to the public sector banks and provided wrong information while availing loans”. Citing government sources, the report said that the “admissibility of evidence” will be heard by the court over the next few days, following which the judgment in the case is likely to be reserved for June end. During the last hearing in January , Mallya’s lawyer Clare Montgomery had argued that evidence presented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) as a “blueprint of dishonesty” was, in fact, a privileged conversation between Mallya and his lawyer regarding “legal advice in clear contemplation of litigation” and hence should be inadmissible. Discussing a separate category of evidence presented by the Indian government, Montgomery had questioned whether the investigating officers in the case were reliable. She pointed to over 150 pages of “near identical material” purporting to be statements of witnesses taken under Section 161 of the Indian CrPC. Dismissing the nature and source of these witness statements, Mallya’s defence had argued that they do not meet “obligations” under the India-UK extradition treaty to provide “proper” statements. The Indian authorities have, however, stressed that they are confident that the evidence meets all the requirements under the treaty. Mallya was arrested by Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant in April 2017 and has been out on bail on a bond worth 650,000 pounds. Recently, on Wednesday, the government had informed the Parliament that 31 business people, including diamond traders Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi and Mallya, facing a CBI investigation, were fugitives abroad. With inputs from PTI