India has won the right to appeal the decision by a U.K. court to deny the extradition request for Sanjeev Chawla, wanted in relation to the South Africa-India cricket match fixing scandal.
The case will now move to the High Court in London, though the date is yet to be set, after India appealed the case on the grounds that assurances it offered on prison conditions had not been taken into account in the initial judgement.
The Crown Prosecution Service confirmed that permission had been granted for the appeal, following the decision by Westminster Magistrates Court Judge Rebecca Crane to deny the request last October.
While the judge concluded there was a prima facie case against Mr. Chawla for his “role in the fixing of cricket matches played between India and South Africa during the tour of the South African Cricket Team to India under the captaincy of Hansie Cronje in February – March 2000”, she said there were “strong grounds” for believing that Mr. Chawla would be “subject to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment in the Tihar prison complex, due to the overcrowding, lack of medical provision, risk of being subjected to torture, and violence either from other inmates or prison staff, which is endemic in Tihar,” according to the judgment, published on October 16 last year.
Mallya case
The hearing to extradite Vijay Mallya will continue on January 22, when the defence is expected to conclude its challenge to the admissibility of certain evidence by the prosecution, followed by the prosecution’s rebuttal.
Should those discussions conclude the same day, the judge could be expected to set the timetable for the written closing arguments to be submitted (no oral closing arguments are expected to be made), and the verdict.
The extradition process for Mr. Mallya has been particularly speedy: it has been less than a year since India made its formal requeston February 9, 2017. During a visit to London, Minister of State for Home Affairs Kiren Rijiju expressed his gratitude to UK authorities for the way matters had been handled.
