{ UP EOW gets nod for extradition of Delhi couple from UK

LUCKNOW : Nearly three years after the arrest of a Delhi businessman couple – Vir Karan Awasthy, 54, and Ritika Awasthy, 52, in London – the UP Police Economic Offences Wing (EOW) succeeded in getting the nod for their extradition from the UK in connection with multiple cases of fraud against them in Delhi and UP, said Swapnil Mamgain, SP, EOW, here on Thursday.

They had allegedly duped farmers on the pretext of wheat and paddy purchase. A London

court allowed the couple’s extradition after much persuasion by the EOW through the country’s nodal agency for extradition – Central Bureau of Investigation – and soon they will be brought to India to be prosecuted in cases registered against them here, he said. Central law enforcement agencies had managed extradition in several cases, but it was rare for state agencies to succeed in getting the accused extradited from abroad, said the SP.

The couple was arrested in London in October 2019 in a case of cheating and criminal breach of trust lodged against them in Bulandshahr in October 2015, he said.

The SP said the couple’s Delhi-based

firm – Bush Foods Overseas Private Limited – had purchased wheat and paddy from a Bulandhshahr ‘Aarhtiya’ (jobber) Lokendra Singh between 2013 and 2015 without making payment of ₹1.76 crore to his firm Saurabh & Sons. Singh lodged an FIR against the couple and their firm under IPC sections 406 for criminal breach of trust and 420 for fraud on October 20, 2015.

“In January 2016, the Supreme Court allowed the couple to visit London for the treatment of Vir Karan Awasthy on a personal surety of ₹86 lakh and they did not return since then,” he explained.