British-Indian couple fights US extradition over alleged cancer drug fraud

Sukhjit Singh Ghuman, 48, and his former wife Kiranjit Ghuman, also 48, face US charges that they imported unapproved chemotherapy and other cancer drugs from India and administered them to patients in clinics they owned in California and Arizona between 2019 and 2023. The scheme allegedly involved billing Medicare and other insurers for expensive FDA-approved drugs while delivering cheaper, sometimes expired, foreign medicines without patients’ knowledge, and reselling approved drugs without a licence.

In London, the duo, now divorced and residing in Nottinghamshire, appeared before Westminster magistrates’ court to oppose extradition, with psychiatrists testifying to their depression and heightened suicide risk in US detention facilities. Their counsel warned of water deprivation, forced communal showers, and gang intimidation in US prisons, arguing such treatment would breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.

US lawyer Peter Caldwell KC countered that the United States takes prisoner welfare seriously and that the suicide risk is not inevitable, emphasizing the defendants’ alleged control of the clinics and joint indictment. The court must now decide whether to send the pair to the United States to face the fraud and drug-smuggling charges.