InfraLive September-15, 2025

Court finds evidence of siphoning InfraLIVE September 15, 2025 43 www.infralive.com excess of 10 lakh; except the Rs salary of the staff and honorar- ium of the doctors. The trust is directed to give details of th monthly expenses, till the 5 of everymonth to JCC.” However, the members of the Group-2 then deliberately started generating bills below Rs 10 lakhs to circumvent the need to obtain the permission of JCC, and alleg- edly took away such amount ille- gally for their own use by defraud- ing the Trust. The court order states, “After going into this Audit Report it is noticed that the office bearers of the trust, at relevant time committed sev- eral irregularities and illegali- ties and drawn payments to different persons without fol- lowing expected legal norms. There are clear violations noticed by the said firm. This report also shows that all the acts done by the then office bears shaking hands with each other for their own benefit caus- ing loss to the trust funds ille- gally. The total amount of alleged fraud and cheating in the several transactions is very high crossing Rs 85 crores plus. The number of transactions are also so many, done across sev- eral years.” The auditors' further investiga- tion found massive scam of the order of Rs 1,243 crore. This too the Trustee reported to the Police. They again did not take any action. The Trustee then had to approach the court, which once again on Febru- ary 28, 2025 ordered Police to reg- ister FIR and investigate (scan at pg 46 to 48). In this case, FIR No. is 375 of 2025 at Bandra Police Sta- tion. Chetan Mehta has challenged this before Bombay High Court, where thematter is pending. The court order states, “The reports of forensic anal- ysis produced by applicant shows that during the long span of time, the total goods of value of Rs 1,243 Cr, were supplied to hospital and its record is not properly maintained. While making purchases and supply- ing goods several illegalities found to be committed by the respondents. It is opined by these experts that it resulted in loss of crores of rupees to the trust. These reports are based on the scrutiny of all the relevant documents pertaining to finan- cial transactions done by the trust during the period of office, held by respondents. It can be said from these findings based on the record that there is sub- stance in the allegations.” The modus operandi adopted by the members of Group-2 was the same in all these matters. They would place order for hospital equipment on select companies, and instead of supplying the equip- ment these companies would return the money in cash to certain members of Group-2 for their own personal use. Many times, the equipment would be supplied at exorbitantly high price, a concept of fraud referred to as “Gold Plating” that was flagged by the Principal Advisor to the Board of Trust explained inPart-6. he Trust money is not T allowed to be used for personal benefits. So much is the legal strict- ness and restrictions that not even one rupee can be taken by a Trustee even if he/she comes to attend a Board meeting. The profits gener- ated from the Trust activities have to be reinvested in the expansions and spreading of its activities. It is a legal framework and every Trust must follow it. But, on the ground at Lilavati Trust the situation was completely different. The members of Group-2 of the Trust were looting the money that was meant for charitable pur- pose. The first instance of the fraud detection has been covered in Part- 7, which prompted HDFC Bank to come with CSR offers to the doctors of the hospital. When the audit firm engaged by Group-1 members further went deeper into accounts, it came across another instance of siphon- ing, this time of Rs 85 crore. The Trustee swiftly reported the matter to Police, which did not take any action. They then followed up in the court, which on December 21, 2024 ordered the Police to register FIR and investigate (scan at pg 44&45). In this case, FIRNo. is 1916 of 2024 at Bandra Police Station. In this matter, acting on a com- plaint filed by Ms Charu Mehta, the Trust's banker (Union Bank of India) approached the Charity Commissioner for effecting certain changes on the withdrawals from Trust's bank account. The Charity Commissioner allowed the bank's application and put restrictions on expenses beyond Rs 10 lakh. In its order of October 05, 2011 the Charity Com- missioner states, “ T h e T r u s t s h o u l d g e t approval from the Joint CC, Gr ea t e r Mumba i Reg i on , Mumbai if payment is in the Part-8 Court finds evidence of siphoning Orders Second FIR for Rs 85 Cr. Third FIR for Rs 1,243 Cr Niket Mehta Chetan Mehta Ayushman Mehta Nimesh Sheth Rashmi Mehta Bhavin