The Enforcement Directorate Thursday claimed before a Delhi court that corporate lobbyist Deepak Talwar has links with fugitive Vijay Mallya in a money laundering case related to negotiations favouring foreign private airlines and causing loss to national carrier Air India. The agency made the submissions before Special Judge Santosh Snehi Mann, who extended the custodial interrogation of Talwar till February 12 after the ED said he was to be confronted with his son Aditya Talwar.
The court had earlier allowed ED to quiz him in custody for seven days, after the probe agency alleged that he acted as middleman in negotiations to favour foreign private airlines causing the loss to national carrier Air India. Mallya, the 63-year-old former Kingfisher Airlines boss, has been on bail in the UK on an extradition warrant since his arrest in April last year and is fighting extradition to India on charges of fraud and money laundering allegedly amounting to around Rs 9,000 crores. UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid on Monday had ordered the extradition of Mallya to India, in a major blow to the embattled liquor baron. He had lost a legal challenge against his extradition in a British court in December. Talwar was deported from Dubai on January 30 and arrested by the agency on landing here. ED had earlier told the court, "It has been alleged that officials of Ministry of Civil Aviation, NACIL, Air India, by abusing their official positions as public servants and receiving illegal gratification, in conspiracy with other public servants, private domestic and foreign airlines, made the national carrier gave up profit making routes and profit making timings of Air India in favour of national and international domestic and foreign private airlines."
Courtesy/By: Sakshi Shukla
|
09 Feb 2019
