Mumbai: Mehul Choksi, the diamond trader wanted by multiple Indian agencies in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam, informed a Mumbai court on Tuesday that he is in Belgium undergoing treatment for cancer.
Choksi’s counsel Vijay Aggarwal made this disclosure while contesting the demand of the probe agencies to declare him a fugitive economic offender (FEO). Choksi cannot travel because of his health condition but since he has revealed his current location, the court cannot declare him ‘fugitive’, Aggarwal argued.
The matter will be heard next on February 27.
Choksi along with his nephew Nirav Modi are wanted in an alleged over 13,500 crore fraud caused to the state-run bank. Nirav Modi, who is currently lodged at London’s Wandsworth prison, has already been declared a fugitive economic offender. Declaration as an FEO enables investigating agencies to seize the person’s properties.
The diamond trader and his wife took up the citizenship of the twin Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda after they fled India on January 4, 2018, days before the Central Bureau of Investigation registered a case against Choksi, Nirav Modi and others.
He claimed in 2022 that he was abducted from Antigua and Barbuda, allegedly by Indian agents, and forcibly taken to Dominica in a yacht. While the Commonwealth of Dominica initially charged him with illegal entry into the nation, it later dropped the charges. “My client has faced mental agony and physical pain when he was being abducted by the sleuths who wanted him to bring to India,” Aggarwal told the court Tuesday. “Post that he has been diagnosed with cancer and has been undergoing treatment in Belgium,” he said.
