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Most of the times in news I hear about someone doing some sort of crime and fleeing the nation and roaming freely in other nation. And the other country can't do any thing about it. What kind of BS is that?

I mean recently in this news this guy Vijay Mallya left India on 2 March after taking millions in loans and not paying it back fled the country.

Can't Indian government ask Interpol or any other authorities to take action over him and bring him to justice?

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  • In general, if he is wanted on suspicion of sufficiently serious crimes, yes they can.
    – phoog
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 8:11
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    Where has the subject been extradited to? This is the kind of information that you probably want to give, if you have it.
    – jimsug
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 9:27

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First, there must be an extradition treaty.

Second, between most countries, a person who gets extradited can only be convicted for the crimes in the extradition request. That sometimes causes a delay. In your case, Indian police might not be sure that they found all the crimes this person is guilty of. If they got an extradition today, they couldn't charge him with crimes they discover later. A bad situation if someone badly injured a person who might die from the injuries, but hasn't died yet. If they ask for extradition now, the criminal might not be convicted for murder if the victim dies later, so the police may wait.

You'd obviously try to flee to a country where there is no extradition treaty. No idea what the situation is between UK and India.

When a request for extradition is received, the question is: 1. Would it be a crime in the country receiving the request if the roles of the countries were exchanged? 2. Does the requesting country have enough evidence that the person would be taken to court in the receiving country? 3. Is there a guarantee of a fair trial, and no cruel or unusual punishment (for example death sentence, cutting off hands of a thief etc. ) and lastly is the crime significant enough, since the extradition itself would already be some kind of punishment.

And that kind of request takes time. If he fled nine days ago, there is no way that he could be already extradited. First the Indian police has to gather evidence that he actually committed a crime, ready to submit to the UK police. Nine days is probably not even enough to send the request. And as I said, if the police has evidence of four loans and gets him extradited, and then they find 20 more loans, they can't convict him for those if they are not part of the extradition request.

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    Do you have any reference to support the claim that the accused can only be prosecuted for crimes in the extradition request?
    – phoog
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 19:23
  • @phoog It's called the rule of specialty. For UK-India, it's Article 13 of the extradition treaty. It's present in virtually all (or maybe actually all, I'm just not sure) extradition agreements, and is as much a basic feature of them as the requirement for dual criminality and the ban on extradition for political offenses. For US treaties, the US Attorney's Manual says it's a feature of all US treaties, at the very least.
    – cpast
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 0:56
  • @phoog Moreover, UK law forbids the extradition of anyone to any non-European Arrest Warrant country without an agreement to provide specialty, and the EAW framework also have provisions about specialty. It really is a very basic feature of extradition: if you're going to limit extraditable offenses, you also must have a way to ensure that the person is really being prosecuted for the extraditable offense and not a non-extraditable one.
    – cpast
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 2:00
  • @cpast okay, but what happens if someone is extradited for, say, securities fraud or something like that, and it later comes out that the person also murdered someone? Would that mean the person would literally get away with murder?
    – phoog
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 4:48
  • @phoog The extraditing country can waive specialty. Otherwise, no, the requesting country would not be allowed to try them for the murder until they have had the chance to leave the country. For the UK-India treaty, the earliest they can be charged is 45 days after they had the chance to leave. There are two exceptions: crimes committed post-extradition, and (in this treaty) lesser included offenses. A country might try to argue that very related crimes (e.g. importing drugs, selling drugs) aren't an issue, but a fraud extradition certainly does not allow a murder charge without consent.
    – cpast
    Commented Mar 12, 2016 at 5:04
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  1. Extradition treaties/agreements

The general principle of international law is that all countries are sovereign and have jurisdiction over all people within their borders; in this regard they are not required to render any persons within their borders to another country, not even to be prosecuted for a crime.

However, if the country the person is in has an extradition treaty or agreement with the country seeking to extradite them (in your case India) then the government may, in some circumstances, apprehend and render the person.

  1. Bars to extradition

Commonly, the crime for which the person is to be extradited may be a bar to extradition, either because it is not illegal in the country that would surrender the person, or because it is of certain natures (usually political crimes), or because of the penalty the crime attracts (death penalty, for instance).

As for this particular case, if I've read the news article correctly and that Mallya now resides in the UK, then there are extradition treaties between the UK and India and the subject could be extradited.

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  • Just one questions why would country not surrender a person who has been given death penalty ?
    – Stupid_Intern
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 9:49
  • Essentially because the death penalty violates the country's laws.
    – jimsug
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 9:53
  • With death penalty cases, it's normally not a permanent and absolute bar to extradition; the requesting country needs to assure the requested country that the penalty will not be imposed, but if they promise you they won't execute the fugitive, it is unlikely to cause issues to extradite.
    – cpast
    Commented Mar 10, 2016 at 13:26
  • @Santosh One good example that is with Canadian law. Canada does not allow anyone to be sentenced to death, and will not send anyone to any country where they know they may be sentenced to death. Canadian authorities will always make sure of this. One good example of this us the United States v Burns case.
    – Zizouz212
    Commented Mar 11, 2016 at 21:55

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