Mehul Choksi has named the mystery woman – Barbara Jabarica – in his complaint.

Fugitive businessman Mehul Choksi has named the mystery woman – Barbara Jabarica – who has been at the centre of his arrest in Dominica, in a kidnapping complaint filed with the Antigua police.  

In his complaint, filed on June 2, the fugitive diamantaire has claimed that Barbara Jabarica had asked him to pick her up from her residence. However, upon going there, he encountered eight to ten men, who kidnapped him.

“Over the past year, I have been on friendly terms with Barbara Jabarica. On May 23, she asked me to pick her up at her house. When I went there, 8-10 men appeared from all the entrances and beat me mercilessly,” Mehul Choksi said in his complaint.

Choksi further said that the Jabarica didn’t help when he was being beaten up.

“When I was being beaten up, Jabarica didn’t even attempt to help me or assist in any other way by calling for help from outside; the manner in which Jabarica conducted herself clearly points that she was an integral part of this entire scheme to kidnap me,” he said.

He further said that the men who beat him claimed to be from the Antiguan Police department. They took away his phone, watch and wallet.

Choksi had mysteriously gone missing on May 23 from Antigua and Barbuda where he has been staying since 2018 as a citizen. He was detained in the neighbouring island country, Dominica, for illegal entry after what the media reported as a romantic escapade with his rumoured girlfriend.

However, the businessman, who is wanted in India, filed a kidnapping complaint with the Antiguan police department on June 2, claiming that he was kidnapped.  

His lawyers alleged that he was kidnapped from Jolly Harbour in Antigua by policemen looking Antiguan and Indian and brought to Dominica on a boat. Choksi was brought before a Roseau magistrate, on the orders of the Dominica high court, to answer charges of illegal entry where he pleaded not guilty but was denied bail. He was admitted in the Dominica China Friendship Hospital. The Dominica High Court has adjourned the hearing of the habeas corpus petition filed by his lawyers.

Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi had fled India in the first week of January 2018 weeks before ₹ 13,500 crore scam in Punjab National Bank (PNB) rocked the Indian banking industry. The duo allegedly bribed the officials of the state-run bank to get Letters of Undertaking (LoU) on the basis of which they availed from overseas banks which remained unpaid.