Mehul Choksi Alleges India Abducted Him to Extract False Confession

A diamond tycoon wanted in a $1.5 billion fraud case told a UK court he was kidnapped by Indian agents in 2021 and tortured to extract a confession that he colluded with political opponents to defraud local banks.

Mehul Choksi, the chairman of Gitanjali Gems Ltd., sued the Indian government and five individuals involved in the alleged abduction at a London court. The Indian government denied the allegations and argued that the case shouldn’t be heard in English courts.

The tycoon remains in Belgium, where he was arrested in April following an extradition request from India’s federal investigators. The London allegations and the £250,000 ($339,690) claim were initiated to upend India’s call for his extradition, a lawyer for the Indian government said in court on Monday.

Choksi, 66, and his former diamond billionaire nephew Nirav Modi, 54 left India before the fraud was unearthed at Indian state-owned banks in 2018. Modi and Choksi were the most high profile men facing charges after a series of frauds involving the diamond industry hit the banks in India, which cuts or polishes about 90% of the world’s diamond supply. 

Modi, who remains in a UK jail, previously lost his extradition case while his uncle Choksi lived in Antigua. Modi and Choksi face charges linked to bribery, fraud and money laundering in India. Both men have previously denied any involvement in the fraud.

Choksi was kidnapped from near his then home in Antigua in May 2021, his lawyers said. “He was brutally beaten, including being punched, tasered to the face, blind-folded, tied to a wheelchair and gagged. He was knocked unconscious,” Edward Fitzgerald, Choksi’s lawyer said in a court document. 

Choksi’s lawyers said he woke up on a sailing vessel to be beaten further and threatened that he and his family would be killed if he didn’t agree to return to India.

Five individuals who are, or were British residents, tortured and threatened him “to extort a false confession from him that he — in cahoots with the political opposition — was guilty of the allegations against him in India,” Fitzgerald said.

The five included a diplomat, his driver, a woman in luxury goods business, a retired ironworks foundryman and a ex-forklift driver, according to court documents. 

They “seem a rather unlikely band of state-sponsored conspirators,” Harish Salve, a lawyer representing India, said in court filings. “India has no knowledge of these individuals.”

“There is no evidence of India having anything to do with the alleged events,” Salve said. Choksi’s account is based on unsupported assumptions and speculations, he said.

Choksi has a compelling case that the Indian government orchestrated the kidnap, his spokesperson said in a statement. 

“India should not be able to avoid accountability for the allegations against them by citing ongoing extradition proceedings,” he said.

Lawyers for the Indian government sought sovereign immunity. None of the alleged acts took place in the UK and the case shouldn’t be heard in the UK, they said.