Even as liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya was granted permission to appeal against his extradition order in the U.K. High Court, India suffered another setback as its extradition request in a murder case was turned down recently by a court here.
On July 2, Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot of Westminster Magistrates’ Court handed down her judgment in a case involving an Indian-origin British citizen Arti Dhir and husband Kaval Raijada, wanted in India for the murder of their adopted 11-year-old boy Gopal and his brother-in-law.
Judge Arbuthnot, incidentally the same judge who had found a prima facie case against Mr. Mallya in her ruling in favour of extradition, “discharged” the couple on human rights grounds under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights. “In the light of my finding that Ms. Dhir and Mr. Raijada if extradited will be subject to an irreducible sentence, I find there are substantial grounds for believing that they would face a real risk of being subjected to treatment, a lack of review of a life sentence, which would be inhuman and degrading,” she notes in her ruling.
The judge did find that “there is a circumstantial prima facie case that Ms. Dhir and Mr. Raijada acting together and with others committed the offences”.
