Mehul Choksi tells Dominican court he is ‘law-abiding citizen’, seeks permission to return to Antigua

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By LE Desk

New Delhi, June 7, 2021: Mehul Choksi, in an affidavit filed before the Dominican High Court, has claimed that he is a “law-abiding citizen” and will not escape from Dominica. Choksi was living in Antigua and Barbuda prior to his arrest in Dominica last month.

The fugitive diamond trader wanted in connection with the Punjab National Bank (PNB) scam moved the High Court in Dominica after the Magistrate Court dismissed his bail plea. The plea was rejected on the grounds that Mehul Choksi is a flight risk since he has no ties to Dominica.

In the affidavit filed before the Dominican High Court now, Choksi says that he should be allowed to go back to Antigua where an extradition proceeding is underway, India Today reported.

In his affidavit, Mehul Choksi also claimed that he had invited Indian agencies probing the PNB scam to question him. Choksi had made similar claims in an affidavit filed in the Bombay High Court in 2019.

Mehul Choksi had fled India days before he was named by the CBI in January 2018 in the Rs 13,000-crore bank loan fraud case.

He went even further to state in the affidavit that investigating agencies in India had not registered a case against him until 2018. “I left India for the US to get medical treatment,” Choksi claimed in the affidavit submitted before the High Court in Dominica.

Interestingly, the medical condition mentioned in the affidavit is the same as the one included in the submission before the Bombay HC in 2019.

Sources had told India Today at the time that Mehul Choksi was in the US till May 2018, after which he left for Antigua and Barbuda.

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/mehul-choksi-pnb-scam-dominica-antigua-bail-hearing-1811658-2021-06-06

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