A UK court on Monday approved Sanjay Bhandari, an accused middleman and consultant in arms deals, to be extradited to India. The 60-year-old faced two extradition requests from Indian authorities, the first related to money laundering and the second to tax evasion.
District Judge Michael Snow, who heard the case at Westminster Magistrates Court in London earlier this year, concluded that there are no bars to him being extradited and decided to send the case to UK Home Secretary Suella Braverman, who is authorised to order the extradition based on the court order.
“However, I only do so on the basis of the Assurances that have been provided by the Government,” he said, with reference to Indian government assurances that Bhandari will be held in a separate cell at Tihar Jail in New Delhi with relevant healthcare provisions while he faces trial in India.
Cases have been filed against him by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection to the Samsung-ONGC deal during the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.
Bhandari was charged with an offence under India’s Black Money Act for a failure to disclose his foreign income within a compliance window of September 30, 2015. During a hearing at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court in March, Bhandari was accused of concealing assets, using backdated documents, benefiting from the assets not declared to the Indian tax authorities and then falsely informing the authorities that he did not possess any overseas assets.
The court decided to attach a GPS tracker to Bhandari’s hand as he was considered a flight risk. He was also asked not to leave a particular area of London.
Bhandari can appeal against the extradition judgment before the High Court within 45 days.
In 2020, the Indian government’s extradition request for Bhandari had been certified by the then UK Home Secretary Priti Patel on June 16 and he was arrested a month later in London on July 15.
Earlier this year, Bhandari sued French defence firm Thales for 11 million euros over claims of pending “commission” for a defence deal signed by India in 2011. However, Thales was reported to have denied the claims and said it “never signed a contract with Mr Bhandari or his companies in connection with this project”. Thales signed a 2.4 billion-euro contract with the Indian government in 2011 to upgrade Mirage 2000 jets of the Indian Air Force (IAF).
In the lawsuit, Bhandari has reportedly called himself a “well-known commercial intermediary involved in arms and defence in India”. He claimed to have “worked with major international defence companies to assist them in negotiating arms contracts with the Indian Ministry of Defence.”
(With inputs from agencies)
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