The Delhi High Court on Monday sought responses from the Centre, CBI, and ED on a plea by middleman Christian Michel James, an accused in the Rs 3,600-crore AgustaWestland VVIP chopper scam case, challenging a provision of the India-UAE extradition treaty. A bench of Justices Vivek Chaudhary and Manoj Jain asked the home ministry, the external affairs ministry, the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) to file their objections regarding the maintainability of Michel’s petition. The High Court listed the matter for the next hearing on April 9, 2026.
In his petition, Michel has challenged Article 17 of the treaty, signed in 1999, which allows the requesting state (in this case India) to prosecute extradited persons not only for the specific offence for which extradition was done, but also for connected offences. The lawyer for Michel, who was extradited from Dubai in December 2018 under this treaty, argued that an extradited person can be prosecuted only for the offences for which the extradition took place, and not for connected offences. Michel has already completed the maximum sentence possible for the offences, that is seven years, for which he was extradited and that his continued detention in India was illegal, his lawyer said.
Michel is among the three alleged middlemen being probed in the case. The other two are Guido Haschke and Carlo Gerosa. In its chargesheet, the CBI has alleged an estimated loss of 398.21 million euros (about Rs 2,666 crore) to the exchequer due to a deal signed on February 8, 2010, for the supply of VVIP choppers worth 556.262 million euros. The ED, in its chargesheet filed against Michel in June 2016, had alleged that he received 30 million euros (about Rs 225 crore) from AgustaWestland.