Setback for Mehul Choksi! UK court finds no evidence on abduction claim; Rs 7.3 crore fine imposed - Details

Mehul Choksi News: Businessman Mehul Choksi has faced a setback from a UK court. The court has ordered the fugitive Choksi to deposit £600,000 (approx Rs 7.3 crore) as security for costs in a civil lawsuit related to his 2024 claims of being kidnapped. According to a Times Now report, the court’s order has declared the fugitive Choksi’s kidnapping allegations to be false.

Justice Mansfield, in his order, said that no witness other than Mehul Choksi himself was presented in relation to the alleged kidnapping and assault. The court acknowledged that circumstantial testimony can be important in cases involving conspiracy, but at this preliminary stage, it is difficult to reach any conclusion based on the evidence available.

“Further, unsurprisingly, there is no witness evidence as to the kidnapping and assault of the Claimant, other than that of the Claimant himself. As is typical of conspiracy cases, much of the evidence is circumstantial and the existence and detail of the conspiracy is said to arise as a matter of inference. Mr Fitzgerald KC is right in saying that circumstantial evidence can be both powerful and sufficient; but at this early stage of the proceedings, before full consideration of all the available evidence, it is difficult to assess,” Justice Mansfield said in his order.

Fitzgerald is Choksi’s counsel in London.

“Fitzgerald KC submits that it would be manifestly unjust to order the Claimant to pay security for costs to individuals against whom there is strong evidence that they highly probably formed part of a conspiracy to abduct, torture and render him to India. In support of that submission, he took me to a number of pieces of evidence, summarised both in his Skeleton Argument and in the Fifth Witness Statement of Mr Phillips, the Claimant’s solicitor.

He relied on an Antiguan police report authored by Inspector Adonis Henry dated June 25, 2021, and upon evidence gathered in a witness statement of Oliver Laurence dated November 24, 2025. Mr Laurence is an investigator instructed by the Claimant’s family.

Both Inspector Henry’s report and Mr Laurence’s statement refer to statements made by others and to documents seen by them. The police investigation in Antigua did not progress, it appears, beyond Inspector Henry’s report. Mr Fitzgerald KC’s submission was that the reason for this was that the investigation was shut down as a result of collusion between the defendants and the governments of Antigua and Dominica.

The Claimant has brought separate proceedings in Antigua against the Antiguan government, alleging a breach of its duty to carry out an effective investigation into his treatment. Those proceedings, it is said, have been repeatedly delayed,” the court said.

In May 2024, Mehul Choksi sued the Indian government, four NRIs, and a Hungarian woman, alleging physical assault and mental harassment in connection with his alleged abduction in Antigua. He claimed that he was abducted and later taken to the Dominican Republic by boat.

Earlier, the Antwerp Court and the Court of Cassation in Belgium had also held that there was no evidence to prove that Mehul Choksi was abducted by “agents” hired by the Indian government in Antigua in May 2021.