Image Credit : DNA India
On Tuesday, Mehul Choksi’s rumored girlfriend Barbara Jarabica appeared on Indian Television. She debunked the “wanted” diamond trader’s claim that he was abducted from Antigua and Barbuda and taken to Dominica.
Barbara affirmed that Choksi aggressively wooed her over the past years by presents of diamond ring bracelets and rings which later turned out to be fake. She further claimed that Choksi attempted to help her start an online diamond trading business and when this original pitch did not work out he offered her a real estate project. She also denied Choksi’s wife, Priti’s charges that she was a part of a spy ring or connived with Indian agent to abduct him and whisk him out of Antigua on 23rd May and torturing him all through the yacht trip.
Barbara clarified that she was not operating under any aliases nor had attempted to change her name and this in itself was proof that she was not involved in the alleged kidnapping.
On contrary to Choksi’s legal team claim that their client was kidnapped and dumped on the beach of Dominica, Barbara asserted, “I had hundred of opportunities driving alone with him on the island and walking with him. If I wanted to abduct him, why would I do it at my home at busy daytime hours when everyone was there on the street walking.”
On Wednesday, Barbara told to ANI, “He (Mehul Choksi) hinted me messages like a yacht and if he goes to other island in the Caribbean, Cuba so there is something that he must be planning for a later stage, that’s one of my opinions also that he told me that he is doing a lot of meditation and like the last month someone visiting from New York and they have their own guru and they did meditation and he also told me this on Sunday during breakfast meeting that he is practicing not to have any feeling of fear and then on that day you have this kidnap situation, story start to holding together.”
She further revealed about Choksi’s Cuba plan. She told to ANI, “Well, he never used the word like escape or shared with ,me such plans like this. However he did ask me twice if I have ever been to Cuba, he also told me that next time we may meet in Cuba. He never explained the escape plan but I am certain that Dominica is not ideal of his final destination but if you ask my opinion, I can be more and more certain that Cuba would have been his final destination.”
As per the local media reports at Dominica, the Dominica high court has adjourned the bail hearing of fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi till June 11. Choksi had approached the high court after the magistrate rejected its bail petition.
The captain of ‘Calliope of Arne’ the yacht on which the PNB scam accused was transported to Dominica claimed that he had sailed from Antigua at 10am on May 23 after clearing custom check and did not come to Dominica clandestinely. This claim almost sweeps off Choksi’s “abduction” claim. A Dominican opposition leader, sympathetic to Choksi asserted that he arrived by ‘Calliope of Arne’.
A Caribbean newspaper Associates Times quoted the captain of the Yacht, Fernandes Fertinant who claimed that his yacht was hired by two guests on May 19, the yacht sailed in the Antiguan waters for the next four days before leaving for Dominica on the morning of May 23.
The claim is differed by Choksi, his wife and their lawyers claim who said that on May 23, he left Antigua home at 5pm local time, went to Barbara’s house where he was overpowered by about half-a-dozen unknown people who barged in and tortured him before bundling him in a wheelchair and taking him to a boat from where he was taken to Dominica.
Earlier Priti Choksi in her serial interviews in Indian TV channels said, “We are deeply anguished by the claim of the Antiguan prime minister about a woman called Barbara as my husband’s girlfriend.” She further disputed the pictures circulating on TV channels as not that of the woman with whom her husband had a “dinner appointment” though she refused having ever met her once.