Fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya, who has now lost all hopes of extending his stay in the UK after the High Court there dismissed his application to appeal his extradition order in that country’s Supreme Court, faces a minimum jail term of seven years if convicted in India.
After losing his appeal, he is expected to be extradited within the next 28 days, unless the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel decides to throw him a lifeline. “The matter of his extradition rests solely with Patel,” legal experts said.
The legal experts also said that the likelihood of his being able to stay back in the UK are remote. He will now be flown back to India whenever international flights resume, they said.
Mallya owes a consortium of Indian banks a total of over ₹9,000 crore, which includes the interest component. He faces charges of money laundering and defrauding several financial institutions, vendors and employees of his defunct airline, Kingfisher Airlines.
The former liquor baron lost the extradition case in the senior courts of England and Wales after Lord Justice Stephen Irwin and Justice Elisabeth Laing, the two-member Bench, dismissed the appeal in a judgment delivered on April 20 and handed down remotely due to the coronavirus lockdown.
Mallya left India in March 2016 claiming that he was visiting his relatives and his children in London. Since then he has refused to return to India, claiming that he will not receive justice here as he has been framed and had been made the “poster boy” of bank defaults.
Mallya was a popular businessman before he fled the country and owned Kingfisher Airlines and a clutch of liquor companies.
Arthur Road gaol awaits
Once he returns to India, he will be lodged in a high-security cell in a two-storey building inside the prison complex at the Arthur Road jail in Mumbai. The building at one time housed the 26/11 Mumbai attack terrorist Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, who was later executed.
“He will obviously not get bail as he has proved to be untrustworthy. Charges will be framed, and evidence will be placed before the courts before the proceedings start. The minimum jail term for economic offences is seven years,” Anandaday Misshra, Founder and Managing Director of legal firm Amlegals, told BusinessLine .