Cong trying best to save Nirav Modi: BJP

NEW DELHI: The BJP on Thursday accused the Congress of trying "its best to save" fugitive businessman Nirav Modi and cited the statement of a former high court judge, also a member of the opposition party, in the diamond merchant's defence in a UK court.

Senior BJP leader and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Abhaythipsay, a former judge of Bombay and Allahabad high courts, deposed as a defence witness in the case to oppose extradition proceedings against Modi by stating that the charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy against him will not stand up under Indian law.

Prasad noted that Thipsay had joined the Congress in 2018 and had met top party leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Ashok Gehlot and Ashok Chavan.

The "judge sahab" is not acting in his individual capacity but is working at the behest of the Congress, he claimed, adding that Thipsay is hardly a big name otherwise in legal circles.

"There is overpowering suspicious circumstances existing from which we can infer that the Congress is trying its best to save and bail out Nirav Modi," Prasad said, claiming that the development has "unmasked" the opposition party which has always tried to "protect" Modi and his uncle Mehulchoksy, also a fugitive.

Indian probe agencies will mount an effective reply to Thipsay's statement, he said.

Though Modi had fled India during the Bjp-led NDA government's rule, most of his alleged crimes pertained to the period of the Congress-led UPA rule, Prasad said and asserted that central government has acted strongly with probe agencies confiscating his assets and auctioning them.

The probe agencies have been working to bring him to justice in India, the law minister added.

Prasad, himself a senior lawyer, had a swipe at Thipsay, saying that he was transferred to the Allahabad High Court from the Bombay High Court 10 months before his retirement on administrative ground. "That tells its own story," the BJP

leader said.

Meanwhile, The UK court hearing the extradition case of fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money

laundering amounting to an estimated USD 2 billion, on Thursday adjourned the trial to be resumed from September 7.

District Judge Samuel Goozee, presiding over the trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court in London, set June 11 as the date for the 49-year-old diamond merchant to be produced via videolink from Wandsworth Prison in south-west London for his 28-day call-over remand hearing, with the case itself set for a case management hearing at the end of August.

Nirav Modi extradition case in UK adjourned until September