India, Feb. 4 -- A special CBI court in Mumbai has dismissed a criminal revision petition filed by fugitive diamantaire Mehul Choksi and another accused, holding that a magistrate's decision to take cognisance and issue process (summon him to face trial) in a CBI cheating and conspiracy case did not suffer from any illegality, impropriety or non-application of mind, even though the order was passed on the same day the charge sheet was filed.

The revision was rejected after the prosecution contended that the challenge itself was a tactical attempt to "delay and derail" Choksi's ongoing deportation proceedings in Belgium-a submission the court recorded while declining to interfere at the threshold stage of the criminal prosecution. Choksi,...