‘Vijay Mallya Extradition Buzz’ Flatters To Deceive

NEW DELHI: All the media houses were abuzz on Wednesday night with the news that disgraced liquor baron Vijay Mallya will be landing in India sometime around midnight. Reports of various news agencies and media houses quoting a myriad of sources claimed that teams of Indian enforcement agencies including the CBI and ED are on a special flight from London along with the ‘once king of good times’ and that it would land in India sometime in the first hours of Thursday.

But as the day wore on, the beleaguered baron continues to elude the Indian authorities as he has been over the last few years. And the news of his extradition from London to India on Wednesday night turned out to be a big hoax. Mallya, the fugitive businessman, has been living a luxurious life in London since he was reported to have fled India in March 2016. He is wanted in India for allegedly defaulting on loans to a consortium of banks to the tune of Rs 9,961 crores.

There was frenetic speculation all of a sudden on Wednesday night that a team of Enforcement Directorate was about to board a plane to India with Mallya in their custody and that he would be flown back to Mumbai any time last night. One television news channel even claimed that the ED team with Mallya in tow had already boarded the flight.

The media reports also claimed that upon his arrival, he would be kept at the CBI office for the night before being produced in a court and finally lodged in Arthur Road Jail. The fact that the disgraced corporate biggie had exhausted all the legal options in United Kingdom to evade his extradition to India turned out to be the basis for the blitz of media speculation.

But just how contradictory the reports were on Wednesday night about his flying back to India, news continued to trickle in on Thursday morning in equally conflicting manner on the fate of his extradition.

A senior official at the Indian high commission in London confirmed to Times of India that the 64-year-old was not flying back on Wednesday night as was largely speculated, or any time soon. “There is no extradition happening as of now. The media have picked up an old statement of the CBI,” he said. “The situation has not changed. There are delays,” he added.

A ToI report indicated that there could be some more delay as Union home secretary Priti Patel has not yet signed on Mallya’s extradition papers for legal reasons. It is speculated that the hesitance to sign on his extradition could be because of the likelihood of Mallya applying for asylum or because of his pending civil cases in UK courts.

The ToI report claimed that Mallya himself has himself dismissed the reports on his extradition in a whatsapp response, saying cryptically, “Only they know what they say!”

But The New Indian Express had an entirely different take on the issue. In its report, it quoted a senior Enforcement Directorate officer to suggest that Vijay Mallya is likely to be extradited to India “anytime soon.”

“Mallya has exhausted all available legal options in the UK with the last appeal, which he lostin the UK top court on May 14 against his extradition to India. There was one more option – of mercy petition – available to him, but he has reportedly decided not to avail it,” the ED officer was quoted as saying in its report.  

Vijay Mallya, the former owner of United Spirits and founder of the now-inactive Kingfisher Airlines, faces charges of fraud and money-laundering in the main case and they are being investigated by both the CBI and the ED.