Lawyer claimed: Mehul Choksi missing

The 62-year-old fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi wanted by the CBI and Enforcement Directorate in connection with ₹ 14,000 crore PNB loan fraud and money-laundering case, has gone missing in the Caribbean island nation of Antigua and Barbuda, to which he fled in 2018.

Choksi's lawyer Aggarwal said "Mehul Choksi is missing. His family members are worried and anxious and had called me to discuss. Antigua police are investigating. Family is in the dark and worried about his safety.” As per the statement of the local reports he left his home on Monday "to go for dinner at a well-known restaurant in the southern part of the island and was never seen again".

Choksi is accused of siphoning off close to ₹7,080 crore in the ₹13,578 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud before fleeing to Antigua on January 4, 2018, a month before the mega-scam came to notice. In a charge sheet filed last year, the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) claimed Choksi didn’t just cheat Indian banks but customers and lenders in Dubai and the United States as well. His assets worth ₹2,500 crore have already been attached.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had claimed in March this year that fugitive businessmen Vijaya Mallya, Nirav Modi and Mehul Choksi are "coming back to India" to face the law. “The three businessmen are all coming back to face law of the land”, Sitharaman said in the Rajya Sabha while replying to a debate on the insurance amendment bill.