Uncertainty shrouds the fate of absconding diamond dealer Mehul Choksi despite the Indian government having sent officials with legal documents and a special aircraft to Dominica for his deportation directly to India. While the arrival of the long-range business jet, a Bombardier Global 5000, at Dominica’s Doughlas-Charles airport signalled the India's keenness to get Choksi, the challenge for Delhi is to prevent his return to Antigua and Barbuda where, according to the Caribbean nation’s PM Gaston Browne, Choksi enjoys legal and constitutional rights despite his government working to revoke the diamond dealer’s citizenship.
While maintaining that Dominica needed to send Choksi directly to India, instead of repatriating him to Antigua, Browne confirmed that Indian authorities had indeed sent an aircraft on May 28 to Dominica where Choksi is in the custody of law enforcement agencies. The Caribbean leader, who is keen to send the alleged fraudster back to India, on Sunday refuted the claim of Choksi's lawyers that he had been abducted and spirited away to Dominica. According to Browne, Choksi had travelled to Dominica with his girlfriend.
Delhi wary of stance of courts in Caribbean
Sources in Delhi believe authorities in Dominica are ready to cooperate. However, they are wary of the stand of courts in both Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda, with Choksi engaging expensive lawyers. Besides, his team has also enlisted, as Browne said, the support of opposition parties in Antigua and Barbuda. The government settled on a Bombardier Global 5000, chartered from Qatar Executive, the charter subsidiary of Qatar Airways, because of the small size of the airport in Dominica. It can handle only small planes capable of doing around 500 miles without having to be refuelled. The Bombardier, in contrast, can fly long distances at a stretch. It flew from Delhi on Thursday afternoon to reach Dominica after 12 hours, with just a refuelling stop in Madrid.
Sources said authorities in Delhi wanted to avoid too many stopovers in case they succeeded in getting hold of Choksi. Choksi’s lawyer has pleaded before the court, which put his repatriation on hold and will hear the matter again, that he can’t be sent back to India as he ceased to be an Indian citizen after having acquired Antiguan citizenship. Significantly for India, Browne also said the issue of Choksi’s Antiguan citizenship remained unsettled.
Political football over Choksi
Meanwhile, Mehul Choksi has become a major political hot potato in the Caribbean with the region's opposition parties and leaders alleging complicity of the Dominica and Antigua and Barbuda governments in the fugitive’s alleged abduction. However, Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne has dismissed suggestions of his government's involvement in the kidnapping.
“The presence of Choksi in Dominica following allegations that he was kidnapped in Antigua, beaten, ferried to Dominica and taken into the country against his will, highlights once again the extent to which departments of government are involved in organized crime under the influence and/or direction of the regime of Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit,” Lennox Linton, the leader of the opposition in the Dominica’s House of Assembly said a statement. He demanded a probe into the violations of the law by the police, immigration and customs officials “who openly allowed to 1) facilitate the operators of the St Lucia based schooner; and 2) detain Choksi on allegations of illegal entry.” He further demanded that the role of the ministers (of Dominica) in the unlawful transfer of Choksi to Dominica be probed.
