PNB loan fraud case: Mehul Choksi was arrested from hospital, had filed ‘freedom request’ on health grounds

When asked about the details of Mehul Choksi’s medical conditions, his lawyer said he was suffering from cancer. File
| Photo Credit: AP

Mehul Choksi was undergoing treatment at a hospital in Belgium when he was picked up by the Belgian authorities, his lawyer told The Hindu on Monday (April 14, 2025).

“He has filed for an appeal or a freedom request. It has pleaded that the probe can continue without the need of him being in the custody. The plea has been moved on the grounds that he is not a flight risk and that he is suffering from medical conditions,” his lawyer Vijay Agarwal said.

When asked about the details of his medical conditions, Mr. Agarwal said his client was suffering from cancer. “Also, he was tortured and that he has faced physical deformity because of the torture. He is suffering from traumatic PTFD (Proximal Tibiofibular Fracture and Dislocation) because of the torture he had faced when he was picked up from Antigua to Dominica. He was kidnapped at that time. It is our appeal that India had sent henchmen who tortured him,” he said.

Sources close to Mr. Choksi’s family confirmed to The Hindu that he was nabbed from the hospital where he was allegedly undergoing treatment for blood cancer, or leukaemia. His lawyers are likely to plead that there is little possibility of him getting a fair trial in India. They also confirmed reports in the Belgian media that quoted Mr. Choksi’s local lawyer that he was not just tortured and abused, but was also allegedly tasered in 2021 on a boat from Antigua to Dominica.

Hariprasad S.V., a whistleblower based in Bengaluru who had blown the lid off Mr. Choksi’s alleged scam, told The Hindu that he was not very hopeful of the early return of the fugitive businessman to India. “If it was possible, it was much more possible to do it in Antigua. It is more difficult to get it in Belgium now. The European laws are stricter for extradition, human rights. It is not very easy,” he told The Hindu from Bengaluru.

“In 2011-12, I had a business deal with Mehul Choksi for a franchise of Gitanjali Lifestyle company. He had assured us that there will be minimum guaranteed returns on investment, that there will be profit sharing on the total sale. The entire operation was to be run by him. He was to give the rent on my property. He was also to give 12% per annum minimum guaranteed return. So, I had invested ₹10 crore then. But I soon realised that it was a ponzi scheme. By the end of 2013, I had realised that many other people were also trapped by him and that it was a big scam. Since then, I filed complaints, approached the central agencies and pursued this for years,” he said.

Mr. Hariprasad said that he did his own investigation against Mr. Choksi and had found that huge amounts of money had been siphoned off from India to abroad. “He had shown his Indian company as loss-making and his American company as profit-making for the same amount at a time when the Indian market was booming. Who buys diamonds worth crores in the U.S. and not in India,” he asked.

Mr. Hariprasad said he had written to the Prime Minister’s Office seeking its immediate intervention in probing the alleged scam. “I had alerted that like Vijay Mallya, Nirav Modi and Lalit Modi, he will run away from the country, duping our banks worth thousands of crores. He finally did run away,” he said.