New Delhi: Fugitive Mehul Choksi’s wife, Priti Choksi said her husband is being treated like a criminal in Antigua and she fears for his life if he is sent back to India.
Priti called her husband’s disappearance a ‘hostage situation’ and said the Antiguan government should be focussing on bringing its citizen back.
“We, as a family, are deeply anguished by PM Gaston Browne’s statements. My husband is treated as a criminal here (in Antigua) because of the statements that Mr Gaston Browne has made in the past of calling him a ‘crook’, etc. etc; and on what basis I have no idea. A man who was trying to live his life quietly is being targeted in this manner,” Priti Choksi told Hindustan Times on phone from Saint John’s.
She also discarded Browne’s statements that Mehul Choksi had political connections within the opposition parties and had bribed them. “My husband is not in touch with any political party.”
According to the fugitive’s wife, her husband had gone for dinner and met this woman, Barbara on May 23. “When he reached her house to pick her up, she asked him to come inside saying she wanted to show him something. It was daytime so my husband went inside. As soon as he entered, he was accosted by men with Indian and Antiguan accents, they tased him, gagged his mouth, tied him in a wheelchair and put him in a boat. Then he was transferred to another boat. His last seen image is from 5.11 pm on Sunday (May 23) and his phone was last on at 5.16 pm,” Priti said.
She also said that all the CCTV cameras of Jolly Harbour were switched off around that time.
The diamantaire went missing on May 23 and was arrested by Dominica police a couple of days later. A habeas corpus in Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court at Roseau has been filed by his lawyers. His removal from Dominica has been stayed for now. Indian agencies have reached there to seek his deportation.
“A crime has been committed. My husband has been taken hostage. It’s an international crime and Interpol should take note of it. And I think that the entire focus of the Antiguan government should be to bring its citizen back. I also want to ask why the Dominican police hasn’t registered an offence of kidnapping,” the wife said.
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