Indiabulls claims huge loss to its share value

Indiabulls Housing Finance Ltd on Wednesday complained to the Supreme Court that it was facing huge loss to its share value due to press reports on a petition filed by a “milk vendor” in the top court, alleging misappropriation of Rs 98,000 crore.

Hurt by bad publicity and loss to share value due to press reports, senior advocate A M Singhvi, representing the company mentioned the matter before a bench of Justices Indira Banerjee and Ajay Rastogi, seeking an urgent hearing.

“An ingenious and novel technique was being adopted by a blackmailer, a milk vendor to cause loss to the company. Frivolous allegations have been made against the company, and deliberately the petition has been already leaked to the media. As a consequence, in two days since filing of the application, IHFL's market capitalisation has been eroded by Rs 8000 crore, causing losses to general public shareholders,” he said.

He said a petition has been filed against Indiabulls, but the company has not been included in the list of respondents. The petitioner was a milk vendor, who purchased a total of only four shares in May, Singhvi said.

The court also wondered by asking a counsel, appearing for Yadav, “how can you file a petition against respondents without making them parties in the petition.” As the counsel agreed to remove the defects from the petition, the court ordered to put the matter for consideration in July.

According to IHFL, Yadav became its shareholder after purchasing the shares from the stock exchange on May 9. It described the allegations against its Chairman Sameer Gehlaut and other directors, as bizarre and meant to malign the reputation of the company.

The petitioner alleged that money worth thousands of crores were siphoned off by Gehlaut and the directors of the firm for their personal use.

"The total loans on the books of Indiabulls Housing are approx Rs 90,000 crores. The allegation of siphoning-off Rs 98,000 crores is bizarre," the company said.

The company said that a racket of blackmailers has been trying to extort money from Indiabulls over the last two months threatening to write complaints to various government departments alleging siphoning off of Rs 55,000 crore if Rs 10 crore was not paid to them, following which the company filed an FIR on June 4 and one of the persons involved into blackmailing was arrested on June 7.