By Gaggan Sabherwal
BBC South Asia Diaspora Reporter
25th February 2021
How did I manage to catch India’s Most Wanted Man? The inside story of how a UK based journalist caught fugitive Indian businessman Nirav Modi
I still remember that day when I was sat at my desk at work at the BBC when I received this Twitter notification from the Telegraph which is one of UK’s leading newspapers and right before my eyes I saw this headline: ‘Exclusive: India's most wanted man Nirav Modi - accused of £1.5bn fraud - living openly in London’.
My first reaction was What! Is this true? I mean is India’s most wanted man really living in my city, London? I quickly clicked on the tweet which had a video attached to it. In that viral video you could see Nirav Modi being confronted by a man in a creamish brown jacket. The interview was surreal and comical too as every time the man asked Nirav questions his standard reply was ‘’no comments’’ and to see Nirav Modi desperately trying to stop and get into a cab on Oxford Street in London, which is one of UK’s busiest roads was hilarious.
This encounter between The Telegraph’s journalist Mick Brown and Nirav Modi happened in early March 2019 and this was one story that till date has left me amazed. Just how did Mick Brown and his team manage to track down India’s Most Wanted man Nirav Modi? Mick had managed to do something which the Indian government and authorities failed to do.I met up with Mick Brown, the man who successfully caught the world’s most wanted billionaire to find out more.
Gaggan Sabherwal: ‘’When and how did you become interested in Nirav Modi and the story?’’
Mick Brown: ‘’This would have been around about December 2018 when I was asked to write a piece about Nirav Modi. At that point he'd been on the run for almost a year and we started asking, well, this is sort of an interesting story. What’s happened to this guy? Where is this guy?’’.
‘’And so, I wrote a piece basically asking that question and doing a sort of a summary of Nirav Modi's career and his extraordinary rise in the world of luxury diamond dealing. And shortly after that piece, I received a tip off to let me know that Modi was indeed living in London, and that he had started a new diamond business and was back diamond trading again’’.
‘’So we started to investigate this and we were able to establish that Modi was indeed living in London, and he was indeed dealing in diamonds from London. After some days of actually watching him we were been able to establish that he had a fairly fixed routine where he would leave his apartment in Centre Point which is a block of flats right in the centre of London. And that he walked a few hundred yards from there to Soho square where his office was and were able to establish that he did follow this routine and that he was a man of routine’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: So this was proper old school journalism. You get a tip off at the back of an article you write and then you work on the lead, you do intensive research, do your checks .....
Mick Brown: ‘’Yes that’s right!’’
Gaggan Sabherwal: Ok so what happened next? You have confirmed that this man is indeed Nirav Modi and a man of routine. What did you do next?
Mick Brown : ‘’We then staked out in that detective parlance, the office and arrived there fairly early in the morning. It seemed that he actually got there before us or managed to get there without us seeing him. So the first confirmation that Nirav Modi was in fact in the building was when we spotted him standing near the window on the first floor of this beautiful Georgian townhouse in Soho square where he had his office and so it was then just a question of waiting until he came out’’.
‘’And so, my colleague, Robert Mendick was positioned actually in a small Park in Soho Square and was able to look up at the window. And was able to then sort of signal me that it seemed that Modi was indeed leaving the building. I was standing beside the front door to to this building. And then Nirav Modi stepped out onto the pavement and he stepped out and turned and walked past me.
‘’I had a videographer working with me that day and so the two of us followed him for a few steps up Soho Street and then basically I just said to him, ‘’Good Morning, Mr. Modi’’ and he turned around and looked rather startled to see me a complete stranger greeting him in this way and I then explained to him that I was from The Daily Telegraph and I'd like to ask him some questions. He looked very shocked. I have to say. He looked like a man who had been shot by a sniper from a burning building. He looked very, very unsettled by this. But quickly composed himself and said, no comment and I continue to try and ask him questions. And again, said no comment’’.
‘’Then he turned on his heel and continue walking up Soho street onto Oxford Street. Now Oxford Street at that time of the day is very, very crowded very, very busy. And he got to Oxford Street crossed over onto the street and then stood on the other side of Oxford Street apparently waiting for a taxi. I was still beside him. At this point, I was asking him questions, and he was still saying no comment, no comment. Now, I thought this was very odd because the logical thing would have been for him to actually just walk away and to continue walking away at least somewhere quieter somewhere that's no public. But no, he stood there waiting for a taxi and I explained to him that it's a very busy time. You're not going to find a taxi on Oxford Street’’.
‘’So we then had this rather surrealistic sort of impasse, where he was standing waiting for a taxi. I was standing there asking him the same questions over and over and over again. At one point, and actually offered to help and get a taxi in a rather sort of way. But finally, a taxi came along and he was able to apprehend the taxi to stop the taxi get into the taxi. And as soon as he got into the taxi you can see he was reaching for his mobile phone He was actually on his phone very, very quickly, I guess to his lawyer or maybe to his office or whomever’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: Did you ever imagine that you would finally track and find India's most wanted man, something that the Indian authorities failed to do?
Mick Brown: ‘’No. I never imagined that for a moment. And really it was a stroke of luck and also a question of expertise on the part of my colleague, Robert Mendick who was much more adept at sort of navigating the sort of bureaucracy and you know actually establishing certain salient points that we needed to establish and from there it was just a question of just diligence and patience really’’.
‘’The most exciting thing was actually being able to establish where he did live and through trailing him and through watching him we were able to establish that it was indeed Nirav Modi and that this was the man that we were looking for, because of course his appearance had changed a little since then, he had put on weight and he had grown a sort of Fu Manchu almost sort of a moustache that looked more like Salvador Dali. And when we did finally corner him. He was there wearing this extraordinary sort of ostrich skin jacket which almost got a Facebook page of its own as people seemed to be so intrigued by this very, very expensive ostrich skin jacket that he was wearing’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: ‘Did you ever expect this video to go viral and did you ever expect such a massive reaction to your interview?
Mick Brown: ‘’We realised that it was it was a big story and clearly we knew that he was India’s most wanted man, but I think, certainly I was taken aback by the reaction to this and to the fact that the story was leading in every Indian news bulletin on the morning afterwards’’.
‘’In a very, very long career, which I've had you know, I've never been involved in anything quite as extraordinary as that I don't think’’.
Who is Nirav Modi and when and why did he flee India?
49-year-old Nirav Deepak Modi was born in Gujarat in India and grew up in Antwerp in Belgium. Nirav came from a family that had been in the diamond business for several generations.
When he was 19, Nirav and his father Deepak Modi moved to Mumbai to work in his uncle’s business. His uncle Mehul Choksi was the head of Gitanjali group, a retail jewellery company in India. Nirav Modi worked with his uncle for nearly ten years and during that time Mehul trained Nirav in all aspects of the diamond trading business.
Nirav then went on to establish his own diamond making operation in India and called it Firestar Diamond. It was in 2010 that Nirav started trading under his eponymous brand specialising in diamonds and slowly Nirav Modi’s brand started gaining popularity and he went on to became one of India’s most sort after diamond merchants and luxury jewellery brand owners and also went on to open a number of stores globally including in places like New York, London and Hong Kong. In 2017, Forbes ranked him as India’s 84th richest person with a personal wealth of $1.75billion.
But all this changed and the once most sort after billionaire diamond trader and jeweller to Hollywood and Bollywood stars went on to become India’s most wanted man.
So what exactly went wrong and where is the world’s most wanted billionaire today?
In early January 2018 Nirav Modi fled India a few days before the Punjab National Bank (PNB), India's second-largest state-run bank filed a police complaint against him and his uncle Mehul Choksi alleging them of defrauding the bank of around $2.2bn. The bank said that the duo had used unapproved guarantees, issued by rogue PNB staff, to borrow from other lenders. But Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi have denied any wrongdoing.
And since fleeing India in January 2018, the fugitive businessman had been living a quiet life in his 8 million pounds Centre Point apartment in Central London whilst the Indian authorities were desperately trying to find him. For 14 months Nirav Modi lived in the UK in his Centre point flat and even managed to start a new diamond business in London’s Soho Square.
But all thanks to Mick Brown’s Telegraph interview, Nirav Modi was finally arrested a few days after Mick and Nirav’s video was published. Nirav was arrested on 19th March 2019 from a Metro Bank branch in Holborn in London where he had gone to open a bank account. And since then Nirav Modi has been residing at HMP Wandsworth. HMP Wandsworth is one of UK’s most overcrowded prisons that was built in 1851 and is a stark contrast to Nirav Modi’s 8 million pounds flat.
And since May 2020 Nirav Modi’s extradition trial has been taking place at London’s Westminster Magistrates Court. Nirav Modi during this period on a number of occasions had applied for bail but has never successful in his attempts despite offering a bail bond security of 4 million pounds. Each time his bail application has been rejected is because Nirav has been deemed to have the financial means and motivation to abscond and is therefore considered a flight risk by the UK courts.
On 8th January 2021 was the final hearing in this high-profile extradition trial where the District Judge Samuel Goozee who has been presiding over this case heard closing statements from lawyers from both Nirav Modi and the Indian government’s side and on 25th February the judge has said that he will be handing down his judgement and will let Nirav Modi if he will be extradited back to India or not.
But realistically how many days will it take to extradite Nirav Modi back to India if the judge decides to extradite him?
I spoke to London based lawyer Harjap Singh Bhangal from Global Legal Solutions to find out more about UK’s extradition process that Nirav Modi has had to follow so far and I also asked him how long would it actually take to bring Nirav back to India.
Gaggan Sabherwal: Let's assume the judge decides to get Mr. Modi extradited back to India, what happens next, what options does he have?
Harjap Singh Bhangal: ‘’After the Magistrates Court has decided actually there is no bar and that Nirav Modi can be sent back to India. Then it is sent to Priti Patel, UK’s Home Secretary who will then decide whether to make an order or not. Now Nirav Modi will have an appeal against this. He can appeal to the High Court and say, actually, no, the magistrate’s decision was wrong and Priti Patel has two months to make that decision to sign the order. But Nirav Modi will instantly put that appeal in in case if he loses’’.
‘’The High Court then hears the appeal and then decides whether the magistrate made a correct decision or not. Also, in that time if Priti Patel does sign the order and says actually, yes, he can be sent back. There is another appeal that Nirav Modi has against that. So, he will have two appeals but both will run at the same time. So, the High Court can hear both at the same time. So, there'll be one date and the High Court will hear both appeals and then it will make a decision’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: Can Priti Patel refuse signing the extradition order?
Harjap Singh Bhangal: ‘’There are many reasons why Priti Patel can refuse to sign it. One is a double jeopardy double punishment and two if she feels there's a threat to his life. And, you know, he's an imminent threat. She's also got to look at her obligations under Human Rights Act and under European Convention of Human Rights, so if she thinks he's going to be tortured, you know, he's going to be persecuted because of his political beliefs then she can refuse to sign it’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: Let’s assume she refuses to sign the order. Then what can the Government of India do?
Harjap Singh Bhangal: ‘’Depends why she has refused to sign it. So, if she says what hold the Indian prison conditions are too bad. What the Indian government can do to rectify it is issue a LOA – and that’s a letter of assurance. That's to say hold on. The prison conditions might be bad. But for this prisoner, we are making special conditions. We will give them as separate cell, they won't be locked up with any other inmates who are dangerous. They will be kept a watch on, the conditions will be clean and it'll be akin to conditions in the UK’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: What happens if the district judge refuses to extradite Nirav. What can the Indian government do? Is that it?
Harjap Singh Bhangal: ‘’No, it could put in another request. It can rectify all the errors which the judge has pointed out, rectify the situation and put another request in and say, well, hold on. We have rectified this and alternatively the Indian government can appeal as well’’.
Gaggan Sabherwal: Roughly how much time will it take to extradite someone like Nirav back to India?
Harjap Singh Bhangal: ‘’Well, I haven't gone through two other appeals yet. So, after the High Court. There's something called a Supreme Court. And after that there is something that Dr. Vijay Mallya is currently pursuing and that is a relief from the European Court. So, these will take time especially in today's day and age with the coronavirus some courts being closed and everything happening online, there is a huge backlog, but backlog not as big as India, but there's still a backlog. So that has to be dealt with. We could be looking at a year, year and a half, maybe even two years’’.
BBC Urdu : https://www.bbc.com/urdu/world-55787688
BBC Hindi : https://www.bbc.com/hindi/india-56207058
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