InfraLive September-15, 2025

Siphoning off Hospital Funds InfraLIVE September 15, 2025 40 www.infralive.com (corporate social responsibility) funds for the eye care department of the hospital through Dr Chris de Souza in August 2024. They wanted to begin with Rs 80 lakh CSR fund, followed by several crores in near future. These developments are revealed in the emails titled as “MoU with the H D F C B a n k ” t h a t w e r e exchanged between the Dr Chris andHDFC. Dr Chris is the consultant (ENT–HeadNeck Surgeon) with Lilavati hospital. One such mail from Ananya K u m a r o f H D F C (ananya.kumar@hdfcbank.com ) to Dr Chris states, “In consulta- tion with the internal team, we would like to confirm if the over- all budget is within the previ- ously mentioned budget of 78L. Additionally, since the funds will be routed through Lilavati as you indicated, we will first need their documents to check for compliance requirement.” While replying to Mr Ananya, Dr Chr i s used to copy h i s responses to Nusrat Pathan (nusrat.pathan@hdfcbank.com) , a n d J a h n a i G a n g u l y (jahnavi.ganguly@hdfcbank.com ) also. In another mail addressed to Dr Niraj Uttamani of Lilavati, Dr Chris mentioned, “further to my email dated 28 August HDFC Bank will donate from their CSR for our Hearing Implantable device program and will further likely donate crores.” Some of these emails we have scanned and put at page 42 for ease of referencing. It is surprising that on the one hand HDFC Bank was into mas- sive litigation with the Trust, and on the other hand it was making CSRoffers. One cannot say that the management was not aware of this development. In any organization, the CSR budget is invariably con- trolled by the management and they decide where to put the CSR money. Therefore, if the top man- agement expresses its ignorance, such statement should be taken as hogwash. nce in control of Trust & O Hospital, the Group-1 members found substan- tial evidence of siphoning off money from the accounts of the hospital. The modus operandi adopted by themembers of Group-2was that they would place order for hospital equip- ment on select companies, and instead of supplying the equipment these companies would return the money in cash to certain members of Group-2 for their own personal use. This way substantial money was being siphoned off in routine manner from the Hospital/Trust, illegally in crimi- nal conspiracy and active involvement of most of the members of the Group- 2. Some of the hospital staff used to help them in this crime. The money, whichwas required to be put to use for creating further facilities and hospi- tals, was being drained out in this manner. Initially in June 2024, the mem- bers of Group-1 found evidence of siphoning off Rs 11.51 crore. Immedi- ately, they filed a police complaint which was converted into FIRNo. 972 on July 7, 2024. This FIR states that two companies - Mayfair Realtors Pvt Ltd and Westa India Pvt Ltd - owned by Suresh Motwani received money from the hospital, and returned a major part of it in cash to certainmem- bers of Group-2 (scan at pg 41). In this regard, we have already explained in Part-6, how a prominent Principal Advisor to the Board of Trustees and a law firm had flagged the issue in their emails to the mem- bers of Group-2, much earlier in May 2020 itself. The issue was reiterated again by the Principal Advisor in 2024 in his mail to several people of Group- 2 and senior doctors of the hospital. Apprehending more such expo- sures in future, it is reliably learnt that members of Group-2 and HDFC Bank huddled and conspired to create a mole in the hospital set-up. They set up a trap with HDFC offering CSR Part-7 Siphoning off Hospital Funds First FIR in July'24. HDFC's CSR offer in August'24 Ayushman Mehta Nimesh Sheth Bhavin Niket Mehta Chetan Mehta Rashmi Mehta