Nirav Modi's bail plea rejected by UK's Westminster Court for the third time

Dressed in a light blue shirt and trousers, the 48-year-old appeared before Westminster Magistrates Court Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot and sat behind a glass enclosure as the hearing got underway.

Fugitive diamond merchant Nirav Modi, wanted in India on fraud and money laundering charges amounting to USD 2 billion, spent Holi behind bars in one of England's most overcrowded jails on Thursday, a day after a UK judge rejected his bail application.

New Delhi: UK's Westminster Court on Wednesday rejected the bail application of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi. The next hearing of the case is to be held in 28 days. UK court has already rejected his bail twice before as he fights his extradition case in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud and money laundering case amounting to up to USD 2 billion.

UK's Westminster Court rejects bail application of fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi. Next hearing to be held 28 days. He was arrested by Scotland Yard on March 19 in connection with the Rs 13,000 Crore PNB loan default case.

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48-year-old Modi appeared before Westminster Magistrates Court Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot and sat behind a glass enclosure as the hearing got underway. Modi's defence team doubled the bail security to 2 million pounds and offered he would stay on 24-hour curfew at his London flat. Earlier, Modi's legal team, led by solicitor Anand Doobay, have offered 1 million pounds as security alongside an offer to meet stringent electronic tag restrictions on their client's movements, "akin to house arrest". He was denied bail by District Judge Marie Mallon at his first hearing on March 20 soon after his arrest by Scotland Yard officers from a central London bank branch as he tried to open a new bank account and has been in custody at HMP Wandsworth prison in south-west London since then. He was denied bail a second time on March 29 by Chief Magistrate Arbuthnot who ruled that there were "substantial grounds" to believe that he would fail to surrender and also noted that "very unusually in a fraud case" the accused had made death threats to witnesses. Nirav was arrested by Scotland Yard on 19 March in connection with the Rs 13,000 Crore PNB loan default case. He is believed to have been living in the UK on an Investor Visa, applied for in 2015 at a time when the so-called golden visa route was relatively easier for super-rich individuals to acquire residency rights in the UK based on a minimum of 2-million pound investment. During his first court appearance, it emerged that the diamantaire accused of defrauding PNB via fraudulent Letters of Undertaking (LoUs) had been in possession of multiple passports, since revoked by the Indian authorities. Now, the diamond merchant remains behind bars at one of England's most overcrowded prisons. (agency inputs)