UK High Court To Hear Vijay Mallya's Appeal Against Extradition On Tuesday

Vijay Mallya is expected to return to court on Tuesday as the UK High Court begins hearing his appeal against being extradited to India to face fraud and money laundering charges amounting to Rs 9,000 crores.

The Royal Courts of Justice in London will hear the appeal against a magistrates' court extradition order, signed off by former UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid in February last year.

The 64-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss, who remains on bail since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017, had sought permission to appeal from the High Court against the extradition order.

In July last year, a two-member High Court bench comprising Justices George Leggatt and Andrew Popplewell ruled that "arguments can be reasonably made" on some aspects of the prima facie case ruling by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot in her extradition order of December 2018.

"By far the most substantial ground is that the senior District Judge (Arbuthnot) was wrong to conclude that the government had established a prima facie case," said Judge Leggatt.

Vijay Mallya's counsel Clare Montgomery had questioned the basis on which Judge Arbuthnot had arrived at certain conclusions and claimed the Chief Magistrate had been "plain wrong" in accepting some of the Indian authorities' assertions that he had fraudulent intentions when he sought some of the loans for his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, that he made misrepresentations to the banks to seek the loans and had no intentions to pay them back.

Vijay Mallya later told reporters outside the courtroom that he felt "vindicated" by the ruling and repeated his offer to pay back the money owed to the Indian banks.

"I still want the banks to take all their money, do what they have to do and leave me in peace," he said.

The appeal will now move on to a full hearing this week, listed for three days until Thursday, with a verdict likely soon after or at a later date.

The High Court judges had accepted Judge Arbuthnot's conclusions on all other aspects of the extradition case as they dismissed the other grounds on which permission to appeal was sought, including so-called "extraneous circumstances" of Vijay Mallya being pursued by the Indian authorities for political reasons of a clash between the ruling BJP and the Congress.