Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi and Nirav Modi will return to India to face law: Nirmala Sitharaman

Speaking at the Rajya Sabha, she reiterated the government’s stand on the fugitive economic offenders and said that "Vijay Mallya, Mehul Choksi, Nirav Modi, all will be coming back to face the law of the land."

"We all know, whose friends were these people and who gave them the money," said Sitharaman said while responding to a discussion on Insurance (Amendment) Bill, 2021 in Rajya Sabha.

Fugitive Indian businessman Vijay Mallya had earlier exhausted all legal options to evade extradition after he was denied permission to appeal to the UK Supreme Court against a High Court order that upheld a 2018 order to extradite him to India to face charges of fraud.

Mallaya, who owned the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, has been accused of committing fraud and laundering nearly Rs 9,000 crore, which he took in loans from different PSU banks, with no intention to return.

In a big win for India, a United Kingdom judge in February had ruled that fugitive jewellery businessman Nirav Modi, an accused in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, can be extradited to the country.

Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi are the prime accused in the Rs 13,600-crore Punjab National Bank scam involving fake guarantees in the name of the state-run lender to secure loans overseas.

Modi and his uncle Choksi left the country in 2018 before the CBI registered a case against him.
.
Last year, the Enforcement Directorate (ED) had managed to bring back to India over 2,300 kg of polished diamonds, pearls and jewellery worth Rs 1,350 crore belonging to fraud-accused jewellers Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi.