The Bombay High Court on Tuesday quashed an FIR against HDFC Bank managing director and chief executive officer Sashidhar Jagdishan. The court held that the complaint filed by the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust was a counterblast to recovery proceedings initiated by the bank.

A division bench of Justices MS Karnik and NR Borkar also set aside a magistrate’s order dated May 29, 2025, which had directed a police investigation. The court quashed related FIRs against Phoenix ARC Private Limited and its directors.

In its 53-page order, the court said the complaint and the FIR, registered at Bandra police station on May 31, 2025, did not justify an investigation. The bench stated that the complaint was a counterblast to the recovery proceedings and the materials on record did not justify an investigation into the claim made by the complainant.

The complaint was filed by Prashant Kishore Mehta, acting as a trustee on behalf of the Lilavati Kirtilal Mehta Medical Trust, which runs Lilavati Hospital in Mumbai’s Bandra suburb. It alleged that Jagdishan acted in collusion with erstwhile trustees of the trust and had received cash payments totalling about Rs 2.05 crore, allegedly on the instructions of Chetan Mehta. The allegation was based on entries in a photocopied cash diary found after the new trustees took control of the trust in late 2023.

The complaint further alleged that in 2006, Chetan Mehta and others fraudulently took control of the trust and, in collusion with other accused, used the trust’s funds for their own benefit and for personal litigation. Following the magistrate’s order, the police registered the FIR under Sections 406, 409 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code, relating to criminal breach of trust and cheating.

Senior Advocate Amit Desai and Sandeep Singhi of Singhi & Co, appearing for Jagdishan, argued that the FIR arose from long-running recovery and enforcement proceedings started by HDFC Bank against the complainant’s family over alleged repayment defaults of more than Rs 65 crore. 

The high court accepted this view, saying the lower court’s order was a gross abuse of the criminal process and was based on a civil matter. It ignored recovery proceedings that had already attained finality through orders of the Debt Recovery Tribunal and the high court.

The bench said the complaint did not disclose the essential elements required to make out offences of criminal breach of trust or cheating. It described the case as one involving a personal vendetta writ large on the face of recovery proceedings, justifying interference at an early stage.

The court said continuing the investigation would amount to an abuse of process. With the FIR quashed and the magistrate’s order set aside, the ruling ends a dispute that had been examined across multiple forums, including repeated challenges before the Supreme Court.

Published on: May 6, 2026 12:53 PM IST