Ravi Shankaran, one of the main Naval War Room leak accused, has filed an appeal in Britain against his extradition to India to face trial.
UK Home Secretary Theresa May had signed the official orders for his extradition to India to answer the Central Bureau of Investigation’s case on May 22, giving him 14 days to appeal against the order.
“An appeal has been filed and it will go back to the legal process,” a Home Office spokesperson said. The case will now proceed to a case management conference (CMC) hearing, to be scheduled over the next few days.
49-year-old Shankaran, a close relative of former Navy Chief Admiral Arun Prakash, has been embroiled in a legal challenge against the CBI’s extradition request to the UK Government dating back to 2007. On March 27, at a hearing at Westminster Magistrates Court in london, District Judge Nicholas Evans ruled that “a case to answer has been made out” against the accused, clearing the way for the Home Secretary to issue his extradition to India.
Meanwhile, the retired naval commander has been remanded on conditional bail, which includes the requirement to live at a single UK address he provided to the court, a deposit of £20,000 and no right to foreign travel.
He is a key accused in the case of leaking classified information from the War Room to arms dealers and has been absconding since the case was registered by the CBI in March 2006.