Bitter Pill

Brothers Malvinder and Shivinder seem to have hit the wall as the law catches up

- K. Sunil Thomas

LOVE AND VIOLENCE. Faith and betrayal. Goons and gurus. The boom-to-doom saga of brothers Malvinder Mohan Singh and Shivinder Mohan Singh is peppered with all these in good measure. Once the poster boys of India Inc (their pharma company Ranbaxy Laboratories and later ventures Fortis Hospitals and Religare Enterprises had all crossed billion-dollar valuations under their watch), they messed it up big time, as their businesses collapsed in just about a decade. Yet, as the drama plays out at the highest court of the land, it is clearly symptomatic of the many lacunae in India’s corporate regulatory framework.

It all started with money, lots of it. And greed. On the face of it, the amount that is making the headlines—3,500 crore the brothers are ordered by the court to pay Japanese pharmaceutical company Daiichi Sankyo—is grave enough. But it is loose change in comparison to the 22,500 crore the brothers are said to have blown up since they sold Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008 and ventured into a blitzkrieg of business expansion into multifarious areas. They lost control of their businesses—some sold to the highest bidder, while some were taken over by lenders. Even their sprawling bungalow in Lutyens Delhi was sold to pay the dues.

“We would now like to fight for our justice and pride... and not for economics,” the brothers said in a joint statement a few months ago. But that was before they turned on each other, even coming to fisticuffs. “He assaulted me. He injured me,” Malvinder alleged in a video he posted online, showing his injuries, last December. A few months earlier, Shivinder had alleged that Malvinder forged his wife Aditi’s signature in some documents, but they kissed and made up after their mother, Nimmi Singh, intervened.