ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s new government may soon start work on inking anextradition treaty with the United Kingdom to bring back corrupt statefunctionaries and those wanted in heinous crimes.
If Pakistan succeeds in signing this accord, it would join the club of atleast 105 countries that have till date had such agreements with the UnitedKingdom.
Newspaper archives further show that Pakistan had earlier sought to sign anextradition treaty with the UK, but the British government had expressedits reluctance to ink any such accord under the pretext that it does notsign extradition treaties with countries subjected frequently to militaryrule.
This seems correct because the UK has not entered into extradition treatieswith most of the Commonwealth countries, except India.
According to the “Hindustan Times,” India had made several extraditionrequests since a treaty with the United Kingdom was signed in 1992, butonly one had succeeded till May 2017, though there were indications thatpending cases might be expedited.
In May 2017, the “Hindustan Times” had written: “Key Indians wanted butbased in the UK include Lalit Modi, Tiger Hanif, Nadeem Saifi, RaviSankaran and Vijay Mallya. The only person extradited so far was SamirbhaiVinubhai Patel in October 2016. He was wanted in a case related to the 2002Gujarat riots.”
In November 2017, a British court currently hearing the extradition case ofembattled Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya, had rejected two extraditionrequests by the Indian authorities.