India And Afghanistan Sign Extradition Agreements

Table of Contents

WHAT IS EXTRADITION?

As defined by Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, ‘Extradition is the delivery on the part of one State to another of those whom it is desired to deal with for crimes of which they have been accused or convicted and are justifiable in the Courts of the other State’.
An Extradition request for an accused can be initiated in the case of under-investigation, under-trial and convicted criminals. In cases under investigation, abundant precautions have to be exercised by the law enforcement agency to ensure that it is in possession of prima facie evidence to sustain the allegation before the Courts of Law in the Foreign State.

In India the Extradition Act, 1962 regulates the surrender of a person to another country or the request for arrest of a person in a foreign land.

The act specifies that any conduct of a person in India or in a foreign state that is mentioned in the list of extradition offence and is punishable with minimum one year of imprisonment qualifies for extradition request.
The process has to be initiated by the central government.

Extradition is usually permissible only for relatively more serious offences, and not for trivial misdemeanours or petty offences.
For instance, the extradition treaty between US and India permits extradition only for those offences which are punishable with more than one year of imprisonment (apart from the condition of dual criminality, which will be dealt a little later).

India and Afghanistan exchanged the instruments of ratification of their bilateral extradition treaty.
The documents were exchanged by Afghan foreign minister Idrees Zaman and Indian Ambassador to Kabul Vinay Kumar.
Pakistani terrorists who enter Afghanistan illegally can also be extradited to India.