Mallya Urges UK Home Secy For ‘Another Route’ To Stay Back

By Poonam Joshi

Fugitive liquor baron Vijay Mallya has appealed to the UK Home Secretary Priti Patel for “another route” to remain in the United Kingdom.

Mallya’s legal representative made the claim during a hearing into the tycoon’s bankruptcy proceedings at the UK High Court in London on Friday.

Mallya, 65, has gone through and exhausted the full legal procedures available to him to fight the Indian government’s effort to extradite him to India to face charges of defrauding a consortium of banks of more than a billion dollars in relation to the collapse of Kingfisher Airlines in 2013.

He remains out on bail awaiting the UK Home Secretary Patel formally signing off on the extradition. The Home Office has previously said that the delay in signing off was due to a technicality.

There has been speculation that Mallya has sought asylum in the UK, which can be requested on a number of grounds, from a human rights perspective to political asylum.

At the High Court on Friday, Mallya’s lawyer Philip Marshall said: “The extradition was upheld but he (Vijay Mallya) is still here because as you know there is another route for him to apply to the Secretary of State for the status,” said Vijay Mallya’s barrister Philip Marshall.

The submission was made during Mallya’s case at the Companies and Solvency Division of the High Court where he is appealing for substantial funds to be released to him to cover his living expenses as well as the vast legal fees that he has accrued and continues to do so.

Mallya has specifically asked for funds from the sale of a luxury property he owned, located on an island off the French Riviera and amounting to nearly PS3 million to be released to him.

The money is held in the UK’s Court Funds Office (CFO) as part of bankruptcy proceedings brought by a consortium of Indian banks led by the State Bank of India (SBI) in lieu of loans that went unpaid by Mallya and Kingfisher Airlines. (ANI)