Kamal Ghorui
TOI Correspondent from London: Former SC judge Justice (retired) Deepak Verma gave evidence in favour of wanted jeweller Nirav Modi at the high court on Tuesday when Nirav sought to “reopen” his extradition appeal.Despite a sovereign assurance from the Indian govt that Nirav will not be interrogated by the CBI, ED, or any other investigating agency if extradited to India, both Verma and Nirav’s former counsel in India, Ashul Agarwal, disputed this, saying Nirav was highly likely to be interrogated by these agencies as “these are independent agencies not bound by direction from central govt”.Nirav, who lost his appeal against extradition in Nov 2022, filed an application to reopen his appeal based on the judgment handed down to defence middleman Sanjay Bhandari in Feb 2025, which prevented Bhandari’s extradition to India on grounds that he would be at risk of torture when interrogated by the investigating agencies in India. Nirav claimed he would face the same risk of torture and that this was compelling new evidence.Verma and Agarwal said Nirav was at risk of being interrogated by the DRI, the income-tax authorities, the SFIO, as well as CBI and ED, once in India.“India claims its sovereign assurance is binding on all agencies, but Agarwal and Verma deny that,” Edward Fitzgerald KC, representing Nirav, told the court.He also claimed that any assurances from the CBI and ED were not reliable because of their “history and track record, and they had repeatedly been found to be practitioners of torture by every international body that has looked at this issue”.In 2018 the customs department registered a case in Surat against Nirav, accused of defrauding Punjab National Bank of Rs 13,000 crore, for evasion of customs duty.Graeme Hall, also representing Nirav, said: “Warrants from the Gujarat court remain in force. Nirav has to be arrested under those warrants and produced before this court, and that can’t be overridden by assurances. Verma and Agarwal both state that once in Gujarat, it is highly likely Nirav will be interrogated by the DRI and so there is a real risk of ill treatment.”Verma said in court that the sovereign assurances “cannot override judicial warrants or the discretion of Indian courts”.Helen Malcolm KC, representing India, reaffirmed there was no prospect of Nirav being interrogated by any investigative agency in India. She said Agarwal is a “very inexperienced” lawyer and Verma “pretends to be expert on Indian extradition but there is no evidence he has ever dealt with extradition”.Judgment was reserved.
