HC rejects Sanjay Bhandari’s plea against ‘fugitive offender’ tag
The Delhi High Court on Thursday upheld a trial court’s order declaring UK-based arms consultant Sanjay Bhandari a “fugitive economic offender” in connection with a money laundering case. “Appeal dismissed,” Justice Neena Bansal Krishna said.
On July 5, 2025, the trial court declared Bhandari a “fugitive economic offender” on a plea by the Enforcement Directorate, which enables the agency to confiscate all of Bhandari’s assets worth crores of rupees.
Bhandari’s chances of coming to India have been virtually nullified after a UK court ruled against his extradition.
His legal team, while opposing the ED’s move to declare him a fugitive offender, claimed its “client’s stay could not be called illegal in the UK as he has a legal right to reside there, and the Government of India is bound by the judgment of the UK court... Bhandari is legally living there, and declaring him a ‘fugitive’ in that scenario is legally wrong”.
The trial court said the “extradition attempt may have failed, but it will not make the accused an angel or immune from prosecution for the violation of Indian laws”.
Bhandari (63) fled to London in 2016, soon after the I-T department raided him in Delhi.
The ED filed its first chargesheet against Bhandari in 2020.
It filed a criminal case against Bhandari and others under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) in February 2017, taking cognisance of an I-T chargesheet filed against him under the anti-black money law of 2015.
The agency is probing Bhandari’s links with Robert Vadra, the businessman husband of Congress MP Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.
