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Informist, Friday, May 29, 2026

 

NEW DELHI – The Supreme Court Friday issued notices to Maharashtra police and others on a plea by Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust challenging the Bombay High Court order to quash a first information report against HDFC Bank's Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Sashidhar Jagdishan. The first information report against Jagdishan pertained to alleged involvement in fraudulent activities concerning the financials of the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust. The trust runs the Lilavati Hospital in Bandra, Mumbai. The top court has also sought responses from Jagdishan and the Central Bureau of Investigation.

 

Appearing for HDFC Bank, Advocate Mukul Rohatgi said the first information report was a fallout of the long-running dispute between factions of the Mehta family and recovery proceedings initiated by the bank. HDFC Bank and its chief executive officer were being drawn into internal disputes within the trust, Rohatgi said. The allegations against Jagdishan lacked any substantive material, he said. Several first information reports had already been registered against various trustees and family members in relation to related allegations, he said. Neither HDFC Bank nor Jagdishan had been named as an accused in those cases, he added.

 

Lilavati Trust argued that the allegations against Jagdishan were distinct and related to the period when certain trustees controlled the trust. If any individual had personally benefited from trust funds, the matter warranted investigation irrespective of the larger disputes surrounding the trust, it said.

 

The first information report against Jagdishan and other bank officials was registered last year on the orders of a magistrate's court at Bandra, after a seized cash diary allegedly showed misappropriation of INR 144.20 million by some of the trustees. According to the first information report, Jagdishan allegedly received INR 20.50 million as a bribe to help a group of erstwhile trustees retain illegal control over the trust. HDFC Bank has denied the allegations and said Jagdishan is 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 defaulters." 

 

The high court said that the complaint by Prashant Kishor Mehta, a permanent trustee and key promoter of the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust, was nothing but a counterblast to the recovery proceedings initiated by the bank against his family for default in repayment of dues exceeding INR 650 million. The materials on record do not justify an investigation into the complainant's claim, the high court had said.

 

The Bandra court magistrate's order to direct registration of the first information report amounts to gross abuse of the criminal process, being founded on purely civil background and recovery proceedings that have already attained finality through orders of the debt recovery tribunal and the high court, it said, The allegations, even if taken at face value, do not disclose any entrustment or dishonest inducement, the high court had said.

 

Friday, shares of HDFC Bank ended 1.5% lower at INR 747.05 on the National Stock Exchange.  End

 

IST, or Indian Standard Time, is five-and-a-half hours ahead of GMT

 

Reported by Surya Tripathi

Edited by Saji George Titus

 

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