Malegaon 2008 blast accused Kulkarni provided armed guard for security

London, Feb 14: Liquor tycoon Vijay Mallya once again asked the Indian banks to take back 100 per cent of the principal amount owed to them at the end of his three-day British High Court appeal on Thursday against an extradition order to India.

The 64-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss, wanted in India on charges of fraud and money laundering amounting to an alleged Rs 9,000 crores in unpaid bank loans, said the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) are fighting over the same assets and not treating him reasonably in the process.

“I request the banks with folded hands, take 100 per cent of your principal back, immediately,” he said outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London.

“The Enforcement Directorate attached the assets on the complaint by the banks that I was not paying them. I have not committed any offenses under the PMLA (Prevention of Money Laundering Act) that the Enforcement Directorate should suo moto attach my assets," he said.

"I am saying, please banks take your money. The ED is saying no, we have a claim over these assets. So, the ED on the one side and the banks on the other are fighting over the same assets,” he added.

Asked about heading back to India, he noted: “I should be where my family is, where my interests are.

"If the CBI and the ED are going to be reasonable, it’s a different story. What all they are doing to me for the last four years is totally unreasonable.”

Lord Justice Stephen Irwin and Justice Elisabeth Laing, the two-member bench presiding over the appeal, concluded hearing the arguments in the case and said they will be handing down their verdict at a later date after considering the oral as well as written submissions in the “very dense” case over the next few weeks.

On a day of heated arguments between Mallya’s barrister, Clare Montgomery, and Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) counsel Mark Summers, arguing on behalf of the Indian government, both sides clashed over the prima facie case of fraud and deception against Mallya.

“We submit that he lied to get the loans, then did something with the money he wasn’t supposed to and then refused to give back the money. All this could be perceived by a jury as patently dishonest conduct,” said Summers.

“What they [Kingfisher Airlines] were saying [to the banks] about profitability going forward was knowingly wrong,” he said, as he took the High Court through evidence to counter Mallya’s lawyers’ claims that Westminster Magistrates Court Judge Emma Arbuthnot had fallen into error when she found a case to answer in the Indian courts against Mallya.

Mallya, who remains on bail on an extradition warrant, is not required to attend the hearings but has been in court to observe the proceedings since the three-day appeal opened on Tuesday. A key defence to disprove a prima facie case of fraud and misrepresentation on his part has revolved around the fact that Kingfisher Airlines was the victim of economic misfortune alongside other Indian airlines.

However, the CPS has argued that “there is enough in the 32,000 pages of overall evidence to fulfil the [extradition] treaty obligations that there is a case to answer”. “There is not just a prima facie case but overwhelming evidence of dishonesty… and given the volume and depth of evidence the District Judge [Arbuthnot] had before her, the judgment is comprehensive and detailed with the odd error but nothing that impacts the prima facie case,” said Summers.

At the start of the appeal, Mallya’s counsel claimed Arbuthnot did not look at all of the evidence because if she had, she would not have fallen into the multiple errors that permeate her judgment. The High Court must establish if the magistrates’ court had in fact fallen short on a point of law in its verdict in favour of extradition.

Representatives from the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), as well as the Indian High Commission in London, have been present in court to take notes during the course of the appeal hearing.

Mallya had received permission to appeal against his extradition order signed off by former UK home secretary Sajid Javid last February only on one ground, which challenges the Indian government's prima facie case against him of fraudulent intentions in acquiring bank loans.

At the end of a year-long extradition trial at Westminster Magistrates’ Court in London in December 2018, Judge Arbuthnot had found “clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of the loan funds” and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a conspiracy to launder money against Mallya, as presented by the CPS on behalf of the Indian government.

Mallya remains on bail since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017 involving a bond worth 650,000 pounds and other restrictions on his travel while he contests that ruling.

Expressing concern over the ban imposed on TikTok by the government of India, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has reportedly called the development in the south Asian country “worrisome”.

TikTok was amongst the 59 Chinese apps that were banned in India but why it hogs the maximum limelight because TikTok had the second-largest user base in India with over 200 million users.

As per The Verge writer Casey Newton, Zuckerberg was worried about TikTok’s India ban. Although it soon cashed into the opportunity and released a TikTok clone “Reels”, the government’s reason behind banning the app in India wasn’t received well by Mark Zuckerberg. 

He had said that if India can ban a platform with over 200 million users in India without citing concrete reasons, it can also ban Facebook if something goes amiss on the security and privacy front.

Why Mark finds it particularly worrisome because Facebook is already involved in a lot tussle with the governments across the world involving national security concerns. 

“Facebook already faces fights around the world from governments on both the left and the right related to issues that fit under the broad umbrella of national security: election interference, influence campaigns, hate speech, and even just plain-old democratic speech. Zuckerberg knows that the leap from banning TikTok on national security grounds to banning Facebook on national security grounds is more of a short hop,” the report by Casey read.

Facebook till now has not faced any kind of issue in India but considering the debacle with the other governments, it is not entirely wrong to worry about its future in India if any national security issue arises. Back in 2016, Facebook’s Free Basics service, which means a free but restricted internet service, was banned in India by the telecom regulators. 

The TRAI had said that the Free Basic services were banned in India because it violated the principles of net neutrality. With Free Basics services, Facebook had planned to bring more unconnected users online. But since 2016, there has been no major tussle between the Indian government and Zuckerberg due to national security issues.

Panaji, Jan 28: Bureaucrat-turned-activist Kannan Gopinathan on Tuesday said even some "RSS people" are convinced the Citizenship Amendment Act is a bad law but are keeping quiet as the NDA government at the Centre is their own baby.

Speaking in Panaji, he further said the Narendra Modi government was behaving like a "drunken teenager" which needs to be questioned or else it will end up destroying homes.

"I was detained twice in UP, kept the whole day, because they (government) do not want the questioning (of CAA). I have met so many RSS people, they also understand this...if you have this conversation, they also understand the government has done something (wrong) and they have been asked to support it," he claimed.

He said the line of thought among these RSS people (he met) was "just support it (CAA)" as they don't want an altercation because the "government is their baby".

"He (government) is not a normal baby, he is a drunken teenager. He should be asked questions because when he starts destroying, he does not destroy somebody else's home but your own home," Gopinathan said.

He also hit out at those who have been claiming that the people protesting against the CAA are unaware about the law and have not even read it.

Gopinathan claimed if one had asked supportive MPs about the CAA on the day it was passed in Parliament, several of them would not have been able to speak on it as "they would not have known what was passed, because they were not given time (to go through the bill)".

He said, earlier, such legislation was passed after several rounds of consultation but "now, by night, it becomes an Act", adding (now) "everything is a surgical strike".

Gopinathan, in a possible reference to the National Register of Citizens exercise carried out in Assam, also claimed "thousands of people are in detention centres".

"It is your fundamental right to peacefully assemble without arms, Article 19 (1) (D) (of the Constitution)," he said at a function organised by a group opposed to CAA.

Gopinathan said people "always felt they were in a democracy" because they never tried to fly, when in reality "you are in a cage".

"The moment you want to fly you realise you are in a cage," he said, adding that "we have to question, we have to ask ourselves where are we going".

"When you don't allow a person to speak against an incorrect legislation, then what is democracy? What is freedom of expression?" Gopinathan questioned.

Gopinathan, a 2012 batch AGMUT cadre Indian Administrative Service officer, was the secretary, Power Department of the Union Territories of Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli when he resigned on August 21 last year.

At the time, he had claimed the people of Jammu and Kashmir were being denied freedom of expression following abrogation of Article 370 by the Centre.