Fabricated petitions led to arrest of extortion kingpin

The law firm Managium Juris’s proprietors are Rammani Pandey and his son Kislay Pandey.

Police said they would convince people in their network to purchase shares of certain target corporates, and fabricate facts and figures to frame voluminous complaints against the companies with various government agencies, including labour courts, alleging various financial irregularities.

“The court petitions are filed in a manner that such petitions don’t get immediately listed. They then extort corporates in lieu of withdrawing such complaints and petitions,” said Muhammad Akil, police commissioner.

In the present case, such a complaint was filed against Indiabulls by a person named Abhay Yadav.

“As a result, the share prices of Indiabulls Housing Finance crashed from ₹733 per share to ₹555 per share in just nine days and Indiabulls Group’s market cap eroded by over ₹11,000 crore, causing losses to its over 380,000 public shareholders,” said Ankit Banga, assistant general manager, Indiabulls Housing.

But when police began investigating into the case and approached Yadav, he petitioned the Supreme Court (SC) to withdraw his complaints. He claimed that he had no knowledge of the “complaints” he allegedly had filed. Akil said the petitioner, Abhay Yadav, thereafter withdrew the petition on June 13 stating in his application to the SC.

Abhay Yadav filed a writ petition which could not get listed as it was filed with defects in Supreme Court, the contents of petition were exactly like complaint of Vikash Shekhar that was sent to various government departments.

“Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Indiabulls lawyer requested the court on our behalf to urgently list the petition as it was causing turbulence in the financial markets. SC came down heavily on the petitioner and asked the petitioner to cure the defects and not adopt this tactic. The next day Abhay Yadav withdrew his petition from the SC, which was filed on the behest of Kislay and Maniram Pandey,” said Akil.

“I do not wish to pursue the writ petition in any manner. You are requested to kindly de-register the above writ petition immediately.” Yadav stated in his affidavit.

“I have no knowledge of the contents of the complaint and do not know anything about Indiabulls,” he said.

(Update: Following the court's order on January 10th, this year, Kislev Pandey, who was a suspect in this case, has been formally acquitted. The court, after reviewing the closure report and submissions, accepted the report and closed the case against him, bringing this chapter to a conclusion.)