More Stories

Informist, Friday, Mar. 27, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Bombay High Court on Friday refused to direct the Central Bureau of Investigation to register a first information report and probe Reliance Industries Ltd., its Managing Director Mukesh Ambani and others for alleged illegal gas extraction worth $155.21 million from Oil and Natural Gas Corp. Ltd.'s wells.  

 

Rejecting a plea by activist Jitendra Maru, the court said that a petition like this causes serious harm to the reputation and business prospects of any corporate entity. "An attempt like this carries an inbuilt threat which may percolate into the minds of the business partners of any corporate entity and thus threatening a present or future business partnership," the court said. 

 

The writ petition is clearly an "abuse of the process" of the court, said a bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Sundar Shyam. The justification sought to be put forth by the petitioner for approaching this court more than a decade after the dispute erupted between Reliance Industries and the Union of India is a false explanation, it said.

 

The high court asked why the petitioner did not approach the court earlier if he had a genuine reason to believe that any crime had been committed in connection with the tapping of gas from ONGC oil wells. The professed cause and the purpose behind the petition, which is masked as the public cause, are mere "pretentious projections", the high court said.  

 

This writ petition is in the nature of a public interest litigation, which does not serve any public purpose, the court said. This is the experience across the high courts that the writ petitions of this kind, or a petition masked as a public interest litigation, are filed at the behest of the failed competitor, a rival business house, or a disgruntled person, the bench said.

 

A person approaching the court must establish his bona fides, the bench said. He must come clean to the court, not with soiled hands that have suppressed material facts from the court, it said. This writ petition fails on each count and has been filed with a "tainted motive", it added.

 

The petitioner said that the government had permitted Reliance Industries to explore the Krishna Godavari basin over an area of 7.645 square kilometres. However, Reliance Industries began tapping gas from ONGC's oil wells, the petitioner said. A complaint was made in this regard by ONGC to the government and RIL said that it was within its contractual rights to extract the migratory gas from the wells.

 

Later on, the parties sought to resolve the dispute by appointing De Golyer and Macnaghten to look into the allegations, the petitioner said. The 2015 report stated that RIL had tapped and extracted gas from ONGC wells without authority, the petitioner said.

 

When the report was made available to the Centre, it constituted a committee comprising former Delhi High Court chief justice A. P. Shah to evaluate it and make recommendations on the government's future course of action. The committee concluded that the RIL had illegally extracted gas worth about $155.21 million from the ONGC wells, but RIL did not pay the quantified amount and invoked the arbitration proceedings, the petitioner said. 

 

Reliance Industries said that the petitioner was an interloper who had filed the writ petition with an oblique motive for a collateral purpose to bring the company into disrepute and garner publicity for himself. Reliance Industries said the basis of the writ petition was derived from a contractual dispute and therefore, the petition was misconceived, devoid of any merit, not maintainable and liable to be dismissed.

 

Friday, Reliance Industries' shares ended 4.6% lower at INR 1,348.10 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Saji George Titus

 

For users of real-time market data terminals, Informist news is available exclusively on the NSE Cogencis WorkStation.

 

Cogencis news is now Informist news. This follows the acquisition of Cogencis Information Services Ltd. by NSE Data & Analytics Ltd., a 100% subsidiary of the National Stock Exchange of India Ltd. As a part of the transaction, the news department of Cogencis has been sold to Informist Media Pvt. Ltd.

 

Informist Media Tel +91 (11) 4220-1000

Send comments to feedback@informistmedia.com

 

© Informist Media Pvt. Ltd. 2026. All rights reserved.