UK-India Extraditions: Ripe for reform? Prasun Sonwalkar/New Delhi Filed on May 8, 2021 | Last updated on May 9, 2021 at 06.37 am India and Britain signed an extradition treaty in 1992, but since then there have been only rare returns of India’s most wanted. As the Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi cases roll on, it may be time to reform the template. How it started…how it’s going: The contours of a popular meme format are useful to put the story of extraditions from the UK to India in context. When India’s home minister S B Chavan and British foreign secretary Ken Clarke signed an extradition treaty on September 22, 1992, the backdrop was Sikh and Kashmiri separatism. The pact took effect from November 1993, with much hope that it would prevent India’s most wanted from seeking a safe haven in the United Kingdom. But the simple truth is that New Delhi has since sought over 40 individuals facing a range of criminal charges from Britain, but only two have made the return journey to face justice: one Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, wanted in a 2002 Gujarat riots case, and cricket bookie Sanjeev Chawla. It started well, but it clearly hasn’t exactly gone well. At almost every bilateral event, Indian interlocutors remind British counterparts about the pending cases; the latest occasion when it was raised was the virtual summit between Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.