Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty and her husband Raj Kundra have landed in hot water again. This time, their lawyer Prashant Patil had to step in with a statement after Mumbai’s Economic Offences Wing slapped them with a case over an alleged Rs 60.4 crore fraud.
So, here’s how the mess unfolded: Deepak Kothari, a Mumbai businessman, filed this complaint, saying he got taken for a ride by the couple over a loan-turned-investment deal linked to their now-defunct company, Best Deal TV Pvt Ltd.
Shilpa Shetty and Raj Kundra react to ₹60 crore fraud case
The whole thing is apparently about a massive sum that just vanished. Since the amount is way over Rs 10 crore, the case quickly got bumped up from the Juhu police to the EOW.
Patil, speaking up for Raj and Shilpa, made it clear that they deny everything. He called the allegations “purely civil,” and said the NCLT (National Company Law Tribunal) already looked into it back in early October 2024.
What is the case all about?
According to him, the company had hit financial trouble ages ago, and everything’s been dragged through legal battles for years. He insisted there’s nothing criminal here just business gone south. Supposedly, every document the cops or auditors wanted has already been provided, right down to the last rupee in the cash flow statements.
Patil also pointed out that the company is now under a liquidation order, and their accountants have been back and forth to the police station more times than anyone cares to count, always armed with paperwork to back up their story. He called the new case “baseless and malicious” and said they’re planning to go after whoever’s behind it.
On the other side, Deepak Kothari, who heads Lotus Capital Financial Services, claims he was introduced to Raj and Shilpa by a guy named Rajesh Arya.
At the time, both Raj and Shilpa were running Best Deal TV, holding nearly 88% of the company. Kothari says they first asked for a Rs 75 crore loan at 12% interest, but later convinced him to invest the money instead, supposedly to dodge taxes with promises of monthly profits and full repayment.
According to Kothari, he put in Rs 31.9 crore in April 2015, and another Rs 28.53 crore that September, all as part of share deals.
Shilpa, he says, stepped down as director in September 2016, though she’d given a personal guarantee just a few months earlier. Later, Kothari claims he discovered the company was going bankrupt because of a separate contract breach in 2017.
