NEW DELHI: More than nine years after naval war room leak kingpin Ravi Shankaran escaped the dragnet of India’s premier investigating agency CBI, it is now confirmed that India is not going after him.

In a move that will end all attempts to bring to justice mastermind of one of India’s biggest military espionage cases, UK high court’s last year’s order quashing Shankaran’s extradition will not be challenged at all, top sources have told TOI. Shankaran is presently living in the UK.

The government and CBI’s stand of not appealing against Shankaran’s extradition is baffling given the fact he is still a proclaimed offender and is listed among the ‘wanted’ persons in CBI’s Interpol list.

A top official said, “We had secured his extradition and he was almost in our hands. But now there is no way Ravi Shankaran can ever be charged for the conspiracy”.

The issue has been conveniently buried by the government as India didn’t go in appeal even when it had a chance.

Up until April last year, UK's Crown Prosecution Service, on behalf of India, had argued that the CBI had substantial evidence proving Shankaran’s active role in leaking Indian war room secrets to arms dealers and hence he deserved to be extradited to India. In fact, UK home secretary Theresa May had signed the official orders for 50-year-old Shankaran’s extradition to India on May 22, 2013 giving him 14 days to appeal against the order. Shankaran had then challenged the order in the high court, which rejected the extradition last year in April.

India’s lawyer in UK Crown Prosecution Service had reportedly advised CBI not to go in appeal, a view, sources say should have been properly examined here by Indian authorities.

Shankaran has escaped the clutches of Indian law even as those accused along with him in the scandal – three former naval officers Kulbhushan Prashar, former naval commander Vijender Rana, and sacked naval commander V K Jha, former IAF Wing Commander Sambha Jee L Surve and arms dealer and Delhi-based businessman Abhishek Verma were last year put on trial in a Delhi court.

Charges have been framed against them and the case is at the evidence stage.

CBI had booked Shankaran in the 2006 case after which his passport was revoked and a red corner notice was issued against him in July 2006. He was absconding since the case was registered in the matter.

An extradition request was sent to the UK in 2007 following reports that he was in the country and was arrested by UK authorities in April 2010 on the basis of the non-bailable arrest warrants issued by a Delhi court.