BY
SATISH JOHN
, ET BUREAU | UPDATED: JUL 04, 2017, 06.27 PM IST
MUMBAI: A Mumbai court on Tuesday admitted a criminal defamation complaint filed by Venkataramanan Ramachandran, the managing trustee of Tata Trusts, against former Tata Group chairman Cyrus Mistry, his brother Shapoor Mistry and their firms, seeking Rs 500 crore in damages and an unconditional apology.
Venkataramanan, also known as Venkat, has accused the ousted Tata Sons chairman and others of making false statements against him, damaging his reputation.
Additional chief metropolitan magistrate Krishna Paldewar ordered issue of notices to the accused — the Mistry brothers and directors of their companies, Cyrus Investments Pvt Ltd and Sterling Investments Pvt Ltd — asking them to appear before the court.
The brothers, through their investment firms, own about 18.4% of Tata Sons, the holding firm of the $100-billion-plus Tata Group. They can move the high court seeking quashing of the complaint.
Venkat claimed that an email that Mistry sent to Tata Sons directors and Tata Trusts trustees on October 25, 2016 contained "defamatory statements" about him. In the email, written a day after the Tata Sons board voted him out as chairman, Mistry had alleged about "certain fraudulent transactions of Rs 22 crore" involving non-existent parties in India and Singapore at AirAsia India, which is partly owned by Tata Sons, and stated that Venkat considered as "non-material" and "didn't encourage any further study" of it. Mistry had also alluded to some foreign bank accounts in some of his statements.
According to Venkat’s complaint, the email, which found its way to the media, caused "irreparable" damages to his reputation among his colleagues, family, friends and society.
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