India sends team to US for extradition of Narendra Rastogi

Thu, Jul 3 08:23 PM

New Delhi, July 3 (PTI) A two-member CBI team today left for the US to extradite Narendra Rastogi, who along with his brothers, including influential UK-based businessman Virendra, has been accused by the agency of defrauding the exchequer of Rs 43 crore while exporting scrap to CIS countries. The CBI, which had launched a hot pursuit of the four Rastogi brothers -- Virendra, Narendra, Ravindra and Subash -- since early 2000, will now bring back the third brother to India as his sentence in the US had been completed.

The US authorities had asked their Indian counterparts to send a team for his extradition. A two-member team led by a Superintendent of Police was already on its way to the US to get him, highly-placed sources in the agency said.

The FBI had arrested Rastogi and three others in May 2002 for defrauding banks around the world of an estimated 600 million dollars by obtaining finance for sham transactions and then pledging them as collaterals for loans. The US federal agency had also sent a request to the CBI to give details about the frauds committed by him in India before he fled to the US. When he was about to be extradited to India, the accused pleaded guilty before a New Jersey court which sentenced him to imprisonment till June 2008.

A CBI team led by the then Joint Director Neeraj Kumar, at present Special Commissioner in Delhi Police, had conducted investigation into the case and collected evidence before chargesheeting them in the case. The CBI had then also managed to arrest Subash Rastogi and get extradited another brother Ravindra from Dubai.

PTI.

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