Mehul Choksi repatriation: Private jet at Dominica airport from India, confirms Antigua PM

Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister Gaston Browne has corroborated the news that a private jet from India has landed at Douglas-Charles Airport in Dominica as fugitive businessman Mehul Choksi continues to be in detention of Dominica Police.

Speaking to a radio show in his country, Browne confirmed that India had sent a private jet to Dominica along with documents pertaining to the deportation of Mehul Choksi. Tweeting a picture of the jet, Antigua Newsroom posted, "PM confirms Private Jet in Dominica is from India."

Meanwhile, no immediate official confirmation came from the Indian authorities about it. A Qatar Airways private jet landed at the Dominican airport on Saturday, Antigua News Room reported, which led to conjectures about the deportation of Choksi, who was detained in the Caribbean island nation after his mysterious disappearance from neighbouring Antigua and Barbuda.

Also Read: Mehul Choksi repatriation: No evidence he was abducted, forcibly taken to Dominica, says Antigua police chief

Browne told the radio show that the jet came from India carrying necessary documentation needed for the deportation of the businessman, the media outlet reported.

Publicly available data of Qatar Executive flight A7CEE shows that it left the Delhi airport at 3.44 pm on May 28 and reached Dominica at 13.16 local time on the same day, via Madrid.

The Dominica High Court has stayed the removal of Choksi from its soil and placed a gag order on the developments until the matter is heard in an open court on June 2

Choksi has alleged that he was abducted from Jolly Harbour in Antigua and Barbuda by policemen looking like Antiguan and Indian and taken to Dominica

Also Read: Mehul Choksi's photos from Dominica surface; show him behind bars, with injury marks

Purported pictures of 62-year-old Choksi that have surfaced in Dominica show him with a red swollen eye and bruises on his hands.

Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi are wanted for allegedly siphoning Rs 13,500 crore of public money from the state-run Punjab National Bank (PNB) using letters of undertaking

While Modi is in a London prison after being repeatedly denied bail and is contesting his extradition to India, Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 using the Citizenship by Investment programme before fleeing India in the first week of January 2018. The scam came to light subsequently

Both are facing a CBI probe.

(With inputs from PTI.)