law cannot be short-circuited either in India or Britain. Hard work, not rhetoric, needed
Critics of the Modi Government have been loudly complaining that the incumbent regime ‘allowed' industrialist Vijay Mallya to ‘escape' abroad while serious cases of loan defaults were pending against him in the Indian courts. They now want him to be ‘immediately brought back' to this country to face trial. Of course, these critics know well that the British legal system, as that of India, does not work on a kangaroo court system. The process of law is long and often tortuous because it offers the accused all reasonable opportunity to present his (or her) case and establish innocence, just as it gives the prosecution time to argue against the accused. All of this involves the presentation of legal material to substantiate either of the claims and arguments for and against these evidences. Even in instances which involve an accused residing within the country, the law, as has been often said, takes its own course. And when the case has to do with an accused who has left and stayed put outside the country, the complications become immense. Given these facts, getting back Mallya is easier said than done — though not impossible. The UK has an extradition process which has to be complied with, by India, and New Delhi has already initiated it by approaching a UK Magistrates Court. Now the prosecution has to give the court substantive evidence against Mallya, and this is where the real challenge lies. Not only must the material stand legal scrutiny but also that it should be supplied on time. At the last hearing, the judge wondered as to why the Indian side had not yet given the relevant evidence for the case to be proceeded with. The result has been that the next hearing will only happen in the last month of this year; Mallya would be on bail until then at least. The Indian side has to pull up its socks and ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service, which has presented the case on behalf of New Delhi, is not let down. Prima facie, it's clear enough: Mallya stands accused of defaulting on bank loan amounts totalling Rs9,000 crore, and of not facing the law here. The prosecution needs to establish this and other related issues in the UK court for extradition to happen. The difficulty in getting an accused extradited from Britain is evident from this one fact: Just one Indian (and that too recently) has been so far extradited by the UK since 1993, when the extradition treaty between India and the UK was signed.
Beyond the legalities, in India, are the political dimensions. The Congress and other opposition parties have accused the NDA regime led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi of letting Mallya off the hook. Two issues need to be put in perspective. The first is that when Mallya went abroad, there had been no legal restriction on his travel. It can be argued that he ‘escaped' but not in the lawful sense. The second is that all of the accused's alleged wrongdoing had happened during the previous Congress-led UPA regime which supposedly helped Mallya get loans from public sector banks without due diligence process being followed. Instead of exploiting the Mallya case for political gains, law-makers must use the opportunity to strengthen and streamline laws that deal with such crimes.