India today gave UK High Commission in Delhi a request to extradite Vijay Mallya.
India today handed over its request to extradite business tycoon Vijay Mallya from the UK where he had flown last year after defaulting on bank loans worth 900 crore and facing charges of money laundering.
The government has passed on the extradition request received recently from the Central Bureau of Investigation to the UK High commission, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup announced. He said India's case for Mallya's extradition was "legitimate" and a favourable decision by UK would show their "sensitivity towards our concerns".
This is the Centre's second attempt to lay its hands on Mr Mallya after the flamboyant entrepreneur, facing the heat for loan defaults in India, landed in London in March last year.
The first effort was made just a month later. New Delhi had cancelled his passport and asked the UK government to deport him to India. But the foreign ministry was told that India's deportation request was not covered under UK laws that allowed visitors to stay back even if their passport wasn't valid any longer.
Under extradition laws, one country can ask another to return a person in order to stand trial or to serve a sentence. But extradition is a much more complicated process than a deportation and gives the judge leeway to decide if a person should be extradited.
Mr Mallya, who had launched the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines that owes over 9,000 crore to various banks, has been charged with cheating and conspiracy by the CBI that filed a 1,000-page chargesheet against him for defaulting on a 900 crore loan taken from the IDBI bank in 2009. The CBI probe found that 250 crore of this - given to buy aircraft parts - was diverted abroad.
Last month, the CBI also arrested eight former officials of IDBI Bank including its former chief Yogesh Aggarwal, and Kingfisher Airlines in this case.