TOI Correspondent from London: Former SC judge Justice (retired) Deepak Verma gave evidence in favour of wanted jeweller Nirav Modi at the high court on Tuesday when Nirav sought to “reopen” his extradition appeal.Despite a sovereign assurance from the Indian govt that Nirav will not be interrogated by the CBI, ED, or any other investigating agency if extradited to India, both Verma and Nirav’s former counsel in India, Ashul Agarwal, disputed this, saying Nirav was highly likely to be interrogated by these agencies as “these are independent agencies not bound by direction from central govt”.Nirav, who lost his appeal against extradition in Nov 2022, filed an application to reopen his appeal based on the judgment handed down to defence middleman Sanjay Bhandari in Feb 2025, which prevented Bhandari’s extradition to India on grounds that he would be at risk of torture when interrogated by the investigating agencies in India. Nirav claimed he would face the same risk of torture and that this was compelling new evidence.Verma and Agarwal said Nirav was at risk of being interrogated by the DRI, the income-tax authorities, the SFIO, as well as CBI and ED, once in India.“India claims its sovereign assurance is binding on all agencies, but Agarwal and Verma deny that,” Edward Fitzgerald KC, representing Nirav, told the court.He also claimed that any assurances from the CBI and ED were not reliable because of their “history and track record, and they had repeatedly been found to be practitioners of torture by every international body that has looked at this issue”.In 2018 the customs department registered a case in Surat against Nirav, accused of defrauding Punjab National Bank of Rs 13,000 crore, for evasion of customs duty.Graeme Hall, also representing Nirav, said: “Warrants from the Gujarat court remain in force. Nirav has to be arrested under those warrants and produced before this court, and that can’t be overridden by assurances. Verma and Agarwal both state that once in Gujarat, it is highly likely Nirav will be interrogated by the DRI and so there is a real risk of ill treatment.”Verma said in court that the sovereign assurances “cannot override judicial warrants or the discretion of Indian courts”.Helen Malcolm KC, representing India, reaffirmed there was no prospect of Nirav being interrogated by any investigative agency in India. She said Agarwal is a “very inexperienced” lawyer and Verma “pretends to be expert on Indian extradition but there is no evidence he has ever dealt with extradition”.Judgment was reserved.

US government has issued an advisory urging companies to implement Microsoft’s newly released best practices for securing Microsoft Intune. The advisory, issued by Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) comes after a cyberattack on America’s largest medical device maker by Iran-linked hackers last week. The attack disrupted the company’s service for more than 5 days. “CISA is aware of malicious cyber activity targeting endpoint management systems of U.S. organizations based on the March 11, 2026 cyberattack against U.S.-based medical technology firm Stryker Corporation, which affected their Microsoft environment,” the advisory says. “To defend against similar malicious cyber activity, CISA urges organizations to harden endpoint management system configurations using the recommendations and resources provided in this alert,” it adds. As per the advisory, principles of these recommendations can be applied to Intune and more broadly to other endpoint management software:

Leverage Microsoft Intune’s role-based access control (RBAC) to assign the minimum permissions necessary to each role for completing day-to-day operations—permissions include what actions the role can take, and what users and devices it can apply that action to.

Use Microsoft Entra ID capabilities (including Conditional Access, MFA, risk signals, and privileged access controls) to block unauthorized access to privileged actions in Microsoft Intune.

Set up policies that require a second administrative account’s approval to allow changes to sensitive or high-impact actions (such as device wiping), applications, scripts, RBAC, configurations, etc. The advisory further informs that CISA is conducting enhanced coordination with federal partners, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), to identify additional threats and determine mitigation actions.

US cyber agency’s advisory to companies

In addition to strengthening Microsoft system, CISA also recommends reviewing the following resources to strengthen defenses against similar malicious cyber activity:Microsoft resources:

CISA resources:

Equity markets across Asia declined on Thursday, tracking losses on Wall Street after a sharp rise in oil prices above $112 per barrel and renewed concerns over inflation and interest rates dampened investor sentiment. In early trading Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.5% to 53,875.94, while South Korea’s Kospi fell 1.3% to 5,845.62. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng edged down 0.2% to 25,725.77 and China’s Shanghai Composite slipped 0.9% to 4,027.73. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 and Taiwan’s Taiex also recorded losses, with the latter declining 1.2%.The sell-off followed a weak session in the US, where the S&P 500 fell 1.4%, turning negative for the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 768 points, or 1.6%, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 1.5%, according to AP.Investor sentiment has been hit by soaring crude prices as tensions in the Middle East show no signs of abating. Brent crude, the global benchmark, traded at $111.24 per barrel, up 3.6% from the previous day, while US benchmark crude gained 0.8% to $96.80 per barrel. Oil prices have risen sharply amidst disruptions to energy infrastructure and supply chain in the Persian Gulf. After strikes on Iran’s largest gas field South Pars, Tehran warned of stern retaliation against energy infrastructure across the region. Going as far as naming the facilities IRGC said it would be targeting as a response to attacks on facilities critical to Iran, according to Iranian state media. Iran said it would target oil and gas facilities in Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates following an attack on infrastructure linked to its South Pars gas field.The spike in energy prices has added to inflation concerns. A report released on Wednesday showed US wholesale inflation unexpectedly accelerated to 3.4% last month, indicating price pressures were already building before the conflict escalated.Markets have been further pressured after the US Federal Reserve kept its key interest rate unchanged, signalling caution on future policy easing. Remarks from Fed Chair Jerome Powell also dampened expectations of rate cuts.“We just don’t know,” Powell said about the trajectory of oil prices and how long President Donald Trump’s tariffs would take to fully impact the economy.Analysts warn that prolonged disruptions in oil and gas supplies could intensify inflationary pressures globally, complicating the outlook for interest rates and economic growth.(With inputs from AP)