Nirav deportation case now in Sept.
London, May 14: 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 $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 for his 28-day call-over remand hearing, with the case itself set for a case management hearing at the end of August.
“I hope Mr Modi by the time we get to September, the current restrictions on movement from prisons have been eased and you can be in court in person to follow the proceedings,” the judge told Modi, at the end of a fourday partial hearing of the case. “The situation is being
kept under constant review as we react to the current pandemic,” he said, in reference to the partly remote setting in which the case was heard this week due to the Covid-19 lockdown.
The first part of the case focused on establishing a prima facie case against Modi but the schedule had to be re-timetabled as the government of India submitted a further set of documents as “corroboratory evidence” on Wednesday. The judge allowed the additional evidence to be introduced but agreed that defence team would require enough time to “digest” them.