Why drug smuggling is more important than conspiracy to murder

Fans of true crime stories on OTT platforms in India may recall the tragic case of a little boy who was murdered in 2017 along with his uncle in the hinterland of Gujarat. The intrepid cops traced the crime to a non-resident Indian woman and her Gujarati immigrant toy boy. The closing scene of the episode had the patriotic inspector telling the smirking woman over an international call that he would get the two of them back to India to face justice. Sadly, he was wrong. That is because a British senior district judge refused the extradition of the diabolical duo—Arti Dhir and Kaval Raijada, now married—because they would face long prison terms in India which would breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights which protects against “inhumane sentences”! That judge, Emma Arbuthnot, would also be familiar to those who follow the cases of two other fugitives wanted by India, Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi. Arbuthnot concluded in 2019 that as “there is no possibility of a review either at state level or by the President of India, in those circumstances, there will be no ‘hope’ or the possibility of exceptional release.” So, she discharged the two and scotched India’s extradition request as there was “substantial grounds for believing that they would face a real risk of being subject to treatment, a lack of a review of a life sentence, which would be inhuman and degrading”. Crime is mostly pretty inhuman and quite degrading too. But if it pertains to a non-third world country then the same perpetrators face a very different outcome, it seems. Having avoided extradition (and even prosecution in UK) for the murder of the two Indians, now Dhir, 59, and Raijada, 35, have been sentenced to 33 years in jail for smuggling 514 kg of cocaine, valued at £57 million, to Australia through their air freight business, as well as for money laundering. That is cold comfort for the rural Gujarati woman who lost her husband and 11-year-old brother to the avarice of Dhir and Raijada. Clearly, the justice system of the UK considers a 33-year custodial sentence for smuggling cocaine from one First World country to another to be neither inhumane nor degrading but a potential similar sentence ordered by Indian courts for the masterminds of a double homicide to be both. And they still say justice is blind! Fortunately, the couple did not get their grubby hands on the £150,000 life insurance policy they had taken out on little Gopal Sejani, but the proceeds of their drug smuggling proved their greed. Some £3 million in cash was found stashed in a locker, while their house yielded silver ingots. They had also bought a house and a luxury car with the money from some 15 drug consignments. The prosecution and judges were supposedly appalled by the couple’s acts. Yet the UK’s High Court while dismissing India’s appeal on Dhir and Raijada in 2019 had said that “further extradition proceedings might also be brought if an adequate assurance is provided showing that an irreducible life sentence will not be imposed on Ms Dhir or Mr Raijada.” Given the heinous nature of their crime—“adopting” a boy and having him murdered so as to claim his life insurance—why did the British judges want leniency from India at that time? Indeed, rejecting extradition may have emboldened others to plot similar crimes as a precedent has now been set to protect British criminals with such intentions. Why should the quantum of sentence for serious offences be seen as a reason to help perpetrators escape justice in the country where crimes were committed? Should Third World nations have one set of punishments for resident Indians and another for foreigners and Indians who fled to safe havens abroad? Meanwhile, it had been reported that senior officers from the Central Bureau of Investigation, Enforcement Directorate and National Investigation Agency were in UK to speed up the extradition of Mallya, Nirav Modi and arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. The government is determined to get these men back but silence on the outcome underlines the fact that India has been singularly unsuccessful in getting fugitives extradited from the UK thanks to the fugitives’ legal savvy. Although India signed an extradition treaty with the UK in 1992, in the past 32 years, UK has agreed to only two Indian petitions. The British judicial process has been painfully slow and its courts appear to be willing to consider the arguments of the fugitives’ defence teams that extradition conditions are not satisfied or that the Indian authorities are not above board about all aspects of the case. This is almost tantamount to British disdain for India’s justice system. Not only has Mallya successfully thwarted attempts by law enforcement agencies to get him back to India to face charges since 2016, but Modi has also relied on the former’s case to do the same. Although UK courts have found that both Mallya and Modi have “a case to answer”—that is, there is substance in India’s charges against them and therefore they should stand trial—they have been tardy about ensuring that the latter happens. A strange dichotomy indeed. In this bizarrely skewed scenario, the “human rights” of fugitives seems to trump justice for victims of their crimes. More so in the case of Dhir and Raijada, whose crimes in Gujarat were not white collar—two Indians including a child were killed on their orders in 2015. They were photographed laughing when India’s extradition plea failed in 2019. UK’s concern for their “human rights” at that time therefore ring hollow given their recent 33-year sentence for smuggling. Follow-up reports in the British media say that the late Gopal Sejani’s widowed sister is angry about Dhir and Raijada not being made to stand trial and go to jail in India for having her brother and husband killed but that obviously makes little difference to the authorities in the UK. India’s success rate on extraditions will remain dismal. The crusading inspector in the Hindi OTT series would surely have a pithy comment or two to make on the quality of British justice. The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost_’s views._ Read all the  Latest News,  Trending News,  Cricket News,  Bollywood News, India News and  Entertainment News here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.