Antwerp: On March 20 or soon after, a three-member bench of judges at an Antwerp court will deliver a ruling on whether Mehul Choksi, once a jewellery magnate of Indian origin, should be extradited to India. Unlike judicial orders in India, this will be a confidential, non-binding opinion to the interior minister of Belgium, Bernard Quintin, who will then decide whether to act on the advice or not.The losing party will, of course, be entitled to a right to appeal to a higher court in Brussels. But the secrecy surrounding the process also means there is a possibility that Choksi could be surreptitiously sent to India, without his family or lawyers coming to know about it.At the hearing on March 3, two photographs were produced as exhibits by John Maes, one of Choksi’s lawyers. The snaps were of Narendra Modi with the alleged ringleader of a gang who are accused of abducting Choksi from Antigua, forcibly taking him on a boat to Dominica, torturing him and attempting to facilitate his rendition to India in May 2021. Gurdip Bath, the man named by Choksi’s lawyers, denies involvement in the matter.The photos taken at a conference in New York in September 2019 are, arguably, not conclusive evidence of Modi knowing Bath other than casually. Bath has also been photographed with Prince Charles, now King. Dramatically walking up to the judges, Maes showed them the pictures with Modi and asserted that this linked the Indian government to the botched abduction of Choksi in 2021 – a crime the fugitive diamantaire has accused Bath and others of organising.Choksi, once a billionaire owner of Gitanjali Group – a dominant player in the jewellery business from manufacturing to retail – is wanted by the Indian Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for allegedly defrauding Punjab National Bank of between Rs 6,000 to Rs 13,000 crores. Choksi denies the charge.The main thrust of Choksi’s lawyers’ arguments before the court was that it should reject the Indian government’s request for his extradition. Three Belgian legal luminaries pleaded for Choksi – Simon Bekaert, Maes and Christophe Marchand. The last mentioned was among the lawyers who successfully prevented Julian Assange, the Australian creator of WikiLeaks, from being extradited to the United States to face justice there.Bekaert, Maes and Marchand divided their briefs into why extradition should not be granted, the Indian government’s alleged hand in the abduction and torture of Choksi and the human rights aspects associated with the case respectively.They submitted, ‘It is contrary to international law to grant an extradition request from a country that has proceeded to abduct, torture and attempted to illegally extradite the very person whose extradition it is now requesting.’The lawyers added there is ‘very real risk that India would resort to extrajudicial measures to obtain a confession from the Concluant [i.e. Chokshi] upon his return to India or otherwise mistreat him once he is under the control of the Indian government’.They then asserted, ‘guarantees from a country that has resorted to abduction, torture and attempted unlawful extradition cannot be trusted’.Maes presented a damaging 10-page report of the Commission for the Control of INTERPOL’s Files (CCF), which supervises the France-based international police organisation INTERPOL. In 2018, the CBI asked INTERPOL to issue a worldwide arrest warrant for Choksi, known as a Red Corner Notice, which was duly enacted.Choksi contested the Notice on the grounds that he had been kidnapped and tortured on behalf of Indian authorities. After examining the evidence furnished by him, a five-member panel of the CCF in an October 2022 report concluded that it discerned ‘there is credible possibility that the Applicant’s abduction from Antigua to Dominica had the ultimate purpose of deporting the Applicant to India, and resolves this creates a strong doubt as to the possibility for the Applicant to receive a fair treatment or trial if returned to India’.It underlined, ‘On this basis, the Commission can no longer find that the red notices are compliant with Article 2 of INTERPOL’s constitution.’ It further stated, ‘FOR THESE REASONS, THE COMMISSION 1. Establishes that the conditions for revision are met. 2. Decides that the data challenged are not compliant with INTERPOL’s rules applicable to the processing of personal data, and that they shall be deleted from INTERPOL’s files.’Last year, Choksi challenged his arrest in Belgium on the basis of the CCF’s ruling. However, the courts in Antwerp and Brussels ignored this document and ordered continuation of his incarceration pending hearing of the extradition matter.Maes also drew notice to the fact that in 2023 the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights found Choksi’s complaint against the governments of Antigua and Barbuda and Dominica in respect of his kidnapping ‘admissible’. He further informed the judges that ‘a criminal investigation was opened in the United Kingdom by the National Crime Agency, which is responsible for serious and organised crime’.Marchand emphasised that documents presented by the Belgian public prosecutor’s office ‘are not such as to invalidate’ his contention that Choksi’s human rights will be contravened. ‘It must therefore be concluded that the extradition of the applicant will violate Articles 3 and 6 of the ECHR (European Commission of Human Rights).’In contrast to Choksi’s lawyers consuming the better part of two hours to argue their case, the public prosecutor appearing for the Belgian state, in effect for the Indian government, took a mere five minutes to state his case.Seemingly, the only new argument he had to offer was that Justice Gavin Mansfield of the high court in London had not been conclusively in Choksi’s favour in his ruling on February 6, 2025 in a case filed by Choksi against the Indian government and five individuals, including Bath, for kidnapping and torturing him.The prosecutor highlighted – though proceedings have yet to advance to trial – that Mansfield said in his ruling, ‘This is not one of those rare cases where it can be seen that there is a high probability of success, either on the preliminary issues (meaning diplomatic immunity and jurisdiction) or at trial.’The March 3, 2026 hearing took place a week after the CBI was lambasted by a judge of a Delhi magistrates’ court on its conduct and failure to substantiate corruption on the part of a former Delhi chief minister, Arvind Kejriwal, and his deputy, among others, while dismissing the case. On a plea by the CBI, the Delhi high court put a ‘stay’ on these observations.Last month, an Indian national Nikhil Gupta, confessed to a New York court that he had attempted to get a Sikh separatist assassinated on United States soil. The indictment in this instance had named Vikash Yadav, described as an employee of an Indian espionage agency, as directing Gupta to commit the crime.It will soon be known if such setbacks cast a shadow over the Indian government’s prospects of securing a favourable outcome in the Choksi case.