A judge at London’s High Court has rejected Vijay Mallya’s application for permission to appeal against the extradition order against him. The order was passed last week, on Friday, by Justice William Davis and sent to all parties on that date. It is, however, not necessarily the end of the story.

This application to appeal was made on paper — via the exchange of documents between the judge and both sides.

Now, Mallya’s legal team can make a renewal application for a brief oral hearing before the same court, in another attempt to push for an appeal hearing. If it were to be rejected at this stage, there would be no further recourse in terms of the appeal process.

“The appellant has five business days to apply for oral consideration,” a spokesperson for the judiciary explained. “If a renewal application is made, it will be listed before a High Court judge and dealt with at a hearing.”

Should Mallya apply for an oral hearing, this could be a lengthy process, requiring time to be found in front of a judge at the High Court. Beyond this court, Mallya would potentially also have appeal opportunities with the Supreme Court and eventually the European Court of Human Rights (though he would not be able to appeal if he were denied permission at the oral hearing).

Mallya, who has been on bail since the start of the extradition proceedings, filed his application to appeal to the High Court after Home Secretary Sajid Javid signed the extradition order against him in early February.

The order comes as Mallya awaits a judgment in a separate case. It involves an interim third-party debt order relating to £260,000 in Mallya’s ICICI Bank account in the UK sought by a consortium of public sector banks earlier this year as part of attempts to recover £1.145 billion worth of assets from Mallya.

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