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Antwerp: On March 20 or soon after, a three-member bench of judges at an Antwerp court will deliver a ruling on whether Mehul Choksi, once a jewellery magnate of Indian origin, should be extradited to India. Unlike judicial orders in India, this will be a confidential, non-binding opinion to the interior minister of Belgium, Bernard Quintin, who will then decide whether to act on the advice or not.

The losing party will, of course, be entitled to a right to appeal to a higher court in Brussels. But the secrecy surrounding the process also means there is a possibility that Choksi could be surreptitiously sent to India, without his family or lawyers coming to know about it.

At the hearing on March 3, two photographs were produced as exhibits by John Maes, one of Choksi’s lawyers. The snaps were of Narendra Modi with one of the alleged ringleaders of a gang who are accused of abducting Choksi from Antigua, forcibly taking him on a boat to Dominica, torturing him and attempting to facilitate his rendition to India in May 2021. Gurdip Bath, the man named by Choksi’s lawyers, denies involvement in the matter.

The photos taken at a conference in New York in September 2019 are, arguably, not conclusive evidence of Modi knowing Bath other than casually. Bath has also been photographed with Prince Charles, now King. Dramatically walking up to the judges, Maes showed them the pictures with Modi  and asserted that this linked the Indian government to the botched abduction of Choksi in 2021 – a crime the fugitive diamantaire has accused Bath and others of organising.

Choksi, once a billionaire owner of Gitanjali Group – a dominant player in the jewellery business from manufacturing to retail – is wanted by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for........

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