Question

Given facts: Country A requests the surrender of X for murder; Country B’s offence list doesn’t include an identical offence. Is extradition possible? (Discuss dual criminality and prima facie test.)

Hint:

Dual criminality is about the \textbf{conduct}, not the \textbf{name} of the offence. Prima facie test ensures the request is not frivolous or politically motivated.

Answer 1

Step 1: Identify what the law actually asks for.
Extradition under the Extradition Act, 1962 and general international practice needs two things to be satisfied before X can be surrendered: dual criminality, meaning the conduct is a crime in both Country A and Country B, and a prima facie case, meaning there is enough evidence to show X probably committed that conduct.

Step 2: Apply the dual criminality test to the facts.
Country A calls the offence murder. Country B's list of extraditable offences does not use that exact word. Dual criminality does not compare labels, it compares conduct. The conduct alleged is the intentional killing of a person. Almost every legal system criminalises that conduct under some name, whether murder, culpable homicide, or an equivalent term. So as long as Country B's law would treat that same conduct as a crime, however it names it, dual criminality is satisfied.

Step 3: Apply the prima facie test to the facts.
Country A must also produce evidence, such as witness statements, forensic reports, or recovered weapons, that would be enough, if presented in Country B, to justify sending the case to trial there. This is the same threshold Country B's own courts use when deciding whether to commit a domestic case for trial. If Country A's evidence clears that bar, this second requirement is met too.

Step 4: Final Answer.
Both requirements can be satisfied on these facts even though Country B has no identically named offence, because dual criminality asks about conduct and the prima facie test asks about evidence, not about matching statutory labels.
\[ \boxed{\text{Extradition is possible once dual criminality (by conduct) and the prima facie evidence test are both satisfied.}} \]

Answer 2

It is easier to see why extradition succeeds here by first listing what would actually stop it, then checking that none of those obstacles are present on these facts.

Obstacle one: no equivalent conduct in Country B's law.
Extradition genuinely fails if the conduct alleged is not a crime at all in the requested state, for example where one state criminalises something the other treats as lawful. That is not the case here; killing another human being intentionally is criminal in essentially every legal system, whatever the exact statutory label.

Obstacle two: insufficient evidence.
Extradition also fails if Country A cannot produce evidence meeting the prima facie threshold, that is, evidence that would justify a trial if the conduct had occurred in Country B. Nothing in the facts suggests Country A lacks such evidence; the question only raises the labelling mismatch, not an evidentiary gap.

Obstacle three: political offence or similar treaty exception.
Many extradition frameworks refuse surrender for political offences, or where the request is a pretext for persecution. Murder committed for private motives, as implied here, does not fall into that category.

Obstacle four: an exact statutory match is required.
This is the one the question is actually testing, and it is not a real obstacle. Dual criminality has never required identical statutory wording between two countries; it requires that the same underlying conduct be punishable in both, under whatever name the requested state uses.

None of the genuine obstacles to extradition are present, and the one obstacle the question raises, a mismatched label, is not a real obstacle under the dual criminality doctrine.

\[ \boxed{\text{Extradition of X is legally possible.}} \]