Mallya arrested, bailed in UK as extradition process begins

NOT SO EASY Bringing fugitive tycoon back to India set to be a longdrawn process lasting months, if not years; next hearing on May 17

Scotland Yard arrested fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya on Tuesday morning and a London court granted him bail within hours, beginning the legal process to send him to India that may be drawn over months, if not years.

The 61-year-old flamboyant businessman, who called himself “The King of Good Times”, was the subject of an extradition request from India for alleged financial irregularities such a loan defaults and money laundering.

He left India for Britain on March 2 last year after a consortium of 17 banks accused him of defaulting on more than ₹9,000 crore, mostly loans taken for his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

He was arrested after he appeared at a central London police station on Tuesday morning. The Westminster magistrates court granted him bail on a £650,000 bond and set the next hearing of his case for May 17.

After getting bail, Mallya tweeted that the extradition hearing had begun in court “as expected”.

In New Delhi, foreign ministry spokesperson Gopal Baglay said the legal process for his extradition is underway in Britain. “The two governments are in touch in this context.”

But it would not be easy to extradite Mallya, according to senior advocates KTS Tulsi and Dushyant Dave, who were of the view that UK courts are very independent and do not grant extradition easily.

There are at least seven stages that an Indian extradition request needs to pass through before an individual resident in the UK is actually sent to India — the process includes the question of death penalty and human rights. In Mallya’s case, the first four stages have been completed.

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KFA’s accumulated losses atthetimeitshutdown

Amount that Kingfisher owed to employees as salaries

What Mallya owes to a consortium of banks led by SBI against loans to KFA, apart from interest and penalties

Amount that lenders have recovered so far by selling pledged shares and other monetisable collaterals. Another '1,250 cr is deposited with the Karnataka High Court

Kingfisher Airlines, named after the bestselling beer brand of Vijay Mallya’s United Breweries, launched

KFA, which never logged a profit, shuts down operations ››P11

India’s annual monsoon will be normal this year, the Met department said on Tuesday despite lingering possibilities of the disruptive El Nino weather pattern which is linked to some of the worst droughts in the country.

The southwest monsoon is the lifeblood for India’s farm-dependent $2 trillion economy, delivering 70 percent of the country’s annual rainfall and is crucial for an estimated 263 million farmers.

“India is in for a normal monsoon which will be good for agriculture and economy,” KJ Ramesh, the director general of India Meteorological Department, told reporters. IMD issues another updated forecast in June.

He said rainfall will be 96% of the long-period average (LPA) with a 5% error margin. India defines normal rainfall as between 96% and 104% of a 50-year average of 89 cm for the entire four-month season.

There is a 38% probability that the monsoon will be better than 96%, he said, indicating the second consecutive normal monsoon after back-to-back drought in 2014 and 2015.

What will come as a music to farmers in several states was the forecast of even rainfall distribution across the country.

Despite normal monsoon last year, large parts of south India received patchy rains in 2016, forcing governments in Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh to declare the states drought affected. Crop failure in some states have pushed many farmers to penury and suicide.

The forecast is critical to the government’s hopes of achieving a projected growth rate of more than 7.5% as a good harvest could lift rural incomes and boost spending on consumer goods.

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