The main legal point established is the application of the dual criminality principle and the authentication of extradition documents under the Extradition Act and the Extradition Treaty.

JUDGMENT

Anish Dayal, J.

1. This petition has been filed by the petitioner to set aside the Extradition Inquiry Report dated 24th August 2022 and the order/letter dated 16th September 2022 of the respondent (Union of India).

2. The background facts of the matter are that an extradition request was received from the Government of Federal Republic of Germany through diplomatic channels for the extradition of the petitioner, who is a German national. Petitioner was an accused in Germany as per a complaint filed before the District Court Muhldorf a. Inn. The allegations related to September 2003, when, as per the case of the prosecution, the petitioner had approached two children of four years and six years old while they were playing and took several pictures of them including asking one of them to pull down their trousers and underpants. Subsequently, after an investigation, his locker in the faculty of Biology and Preclinical Medicine at the University of Regensburg, was found to have numerous CDs and DVDs where images of both male and female children were stored performing sexual acts with adult persons. Accordingly, the petitioner was alleged to have committed the following offenses under the German Criminal Code: Section 176, (sexual abuse of children); Section 184 (b) (dissemination/procurement and possession of child pornography; Section 223 (bodily harm); Section 230 (request to prosecute); Section 234 (kidnapping); Section 52 (several offences committed by one act); Section 53 (joinder of offences).

3. The Republic of Germany as the Requesting State sent a formal request for extradition of the petitioner vide Note Verbale No. 358/ 2020, dated 27th July 2020 along with supporting documents to the Government of India, (the Requested State). Consequently, the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India made a request on 17th March 2022 under Section 12 of the Extradition Act to conduct an inquiry proceeding qua the petitioner. It had also transpired in the meantime that the petitioner had been arrested in 2020 in the state of Karnataka in India for violation of the Foreigners Act 1946, Section 14 (c) and was facing trial in SC No. 5023 of 2021, PS. Hebbagodi, Karnataka before the learned, ASJ, Anekal, Bengaluru, Courts. The learned ACMM before whom the inquiry proceedings were initiated issued production warrants on 22nd March 2022, pursuant to which the petitioner was produced on 1st April 2022 and has since been in custody in Tihar Jail, Delhi.

4. The learned ACMM as part of the process of the inquiry, adverted to the Note Verbale and other attendant documents, the endorsement certificate issued by the Central Government under Section 15 of the Extradition Act 1962 and the Extradition Treaty between the Federal Republic of Germany and Republic of India. The Union of India examined one witness as CW-1, the Deputy Secretary (Extradition), Ministry of External Affairs. The learned ACMM upon examination of the settled law for conducting inquiries under the Extradition Act noted that two aspects had to be examined- firstly, whether the endorsed warrant for the apprehension of the fugitive is duly authenticated; and secondly, whether the offense for which the fugitive is accused is an extradition offence.

5. Proceeding on this limited scope of inquiry, the learned ACMM arrived at a finding that since the offences in question constituted an illegal/criminal act under laws of both the requesting as well as the requested state and are punishable by a maximum term of imprisonment for a period of at least one year, in both the countries, the principle of dual criminality was duly satisfied and the offences in question were therefore extraditable offences. This conclusion was reached on the basis of Article 2 (1) (3) of the Extradition Treaty and Section 2 (c) (i) of the Extradition Act. For the second limb of the inquiry, the learned ACMM arrived at the conclusion that the documents which had been sent with the request f