A judge at London’s High Court has rejected businessman Vijay Mallya’s application for permission to appeal against the extradition order against him. The order was passed on Friday last week by Justice William Davis and sent to all parties on that date. It does not, however, necessarily mean the end of the story.
This application to appeal was made on paper — via the exchange of documents between the judge and both sides. Now Mr. Mallya’s legal team can make a renewal application for a brief oral hearing before the same court, in another attempt to push for an appeal hearing. If it were to be rejected at this stage there would be no further recourse in terms of the appeal process.
“The appellant has 5 business days to apply for oral consideration,” a spokesperson for the judiciary explained.
“If a renewal application is made, it will be listed before a High Court judge and dealt with at a hearing.” Should Mr. Mallya apply for an oral hearing, this could be a lengthy process, requiring time to be found in front of a judge at the High Court. Beyond this court, Mr. Mallya would potentially also have appeal opportunities to the Supreme Court and eventually the European Court of Human Rights (though he would not be able to appeal if he were denied permission to appeal at the oral hearing).
Mr. Mallya, who has been on bail on an extradition warrant since the start of the extradition proceedings, launched his application to appeal to the High Court after Home Secretary Sajid Javid signed the extradition order against him in early February.
The order comes as Mr. Mallya awaits a judgment in a separate case. It involves an interim third-party debt order relating to £260,000 in Mr. Mallya’s ICICI bank account in the UK from a consortium of public sector banks earlier this year. The banks have been attempting to recover £1.145 billion worth of assets from Mr. Mallya.
