MUMBAI: Sashidhar Jagdishan, the chief executive of the largest private sector lender HDFC Bank, has moved the Supreme Court seeking to quash the FIR filed by the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust alleging that he has taken a bribe of Rs 2.05 crore from one of the past trustees.
The apex court will hear the matter Friday.
The desperate move by Jagdishan comes after three judges of the Bombay High Court had over the past few weeks recused themselves from hearing the case citing their investments in the bank’s shares or their personal associations with the both the petitioners.
Also, according to an earlier administrative order by the High Court, cases related to the Lilavati Trust are not to be listed before six other judges too.
The FIR filed by the Lilavati Medical Trust, which runs a superspeciality hospital under the name of Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai, had accused Jagdishan of accepting a bribe of Rs 2.05 crore from an erstwhile trustee Chetan Mehta, for giving him financial advice and helping him to retain control over the Trust's governance.
According to a report in LiveLaw, a website that covers legal matters, on Thursday senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi mentioned the matter before a bench of justices MM Sundresh and K Vinod Chandran and sought urgent listing of the matter Friday.
Justice Sundresh, who presided over the brief hearing, directed that the matter be listed for Friday.
The FIR also accuses Jagdishan of interfering in the internal affairs of the trust by misusing his position.
Initially, Jagdishan's plea was listed for hearing before a HC division bench of justices Ajay Gadkari and Rajesh Patil on June 18. However, Justice Patil cited some personal difficulty and recused from hearing the matter and the court has agreed to hear the matter Friday.
HDFC Bank had been refuting all the charges lelvelled by the trust and Mehta saying the bank and its senior officials are being targeted by unscrupulous persons who are abusing the legal process to thwart the recovery of the long outstanding loan due to the bank from recalcitrant defaulter- Splendour Gems (formerly known as Beautiful Diamonds), a company owned by the petitioner Mehta and had owed Rs 65.22 crore to the bank till end May.
The bank had also said it was concerned about its stakeholders and was taking strong legal actions for making these baseless allegations with malafide motives.
Rohatgi called the FIR as “frivolous” adding the bank has to recover money from them and this is a way for them to allegedly arm-twist out of paying.
“A frivolous FIR has been lodged against the MD and the bank, by the trustees of the Lilavati hospital, who are litigating against the other group of trustees. The bank has to recover money from them. To twist the arm, they have now lodged an FIR through a Mumbai magistrate against the managing director. We went to the Bombay High Court. Three benches of the court recused from hearing. Now the next date is given as July 14, that is also tentative. Everyday the bank is suffering,” Rohatgi submitted in the petition according to the report in LivLaw.
Rohatgi further argued that despite multiple attempts, the matter could not be heard by any of the three benches of the Bombay HC, prompting them to seek relief from the Supreme Court. He further said the FIR had no legal basis and was filed only because the bank had initiated steps to recover outstanding payments from the hospital.
It can be noted that the matter was first listed before the Bombay HC division bench of justices Ajay Gadkari and Rajesh Patil on June 18, wherein judge Patil cited personal reasons and recused from the hearing. Later, Jagdishan's legal team moved a bench of justices Sarang Kotwal and Shyam Chandak, from which judge Kotwal recused noting that he had earlier represented one of the trustees. In the third instance, they moved another division bench of justices Mahesh Sonak and Jitendra Jain, where judge Jain disclosed that he owns shares in HDFC Bank and recused after an objection was raised.
Earlier Jagdishan had approached the Bombay HC challenging the FIR filed against him on a complaint by the Lilavati Trust saying the magistrate order for registering an FIR against him was “self contradictory and flawed”.
On May 29, Komalsing Rajput, a magistrate court judge, had ordered the Mumbai police to register offences punishable under sections 406, 409 (criminal breach of trust) and 420 (cheating) of the IPC and had directed the police to probe the matter as per section 175 (3) of the Bhartiya Nagrik Suraksha Sanhita (BNSS). The Bandra police registered the FIR on May 31.
The magistrate had in the May 29 order noted the contents of the diary showed that amounts were transferred from time to time, that the allegations constituted cognizable offences and the amount involved was “high”. She also noted that to verify and collect evidence to ascertain the source of amounts and how they were transferred without any reason, a police probe was necessary and hence ordered a probe by the Bandra police.
The Bandra police registered another FIR on May 31 against Chetan Mehta, Phoenix ARC and others for embezzlement of trust funds to the tune of Rs 2.25 crore. Phoenix ARC, along with accused persons Keki Elavia and Venkatu Srinivasan have also approached the HC seeking to quash the embezzlement FIR against them.