RIL executive arrested on charge of conspiring to kill Wadia
Bombay Dyeing-Reliance feud: RIL executive arrested on charge of conspiring to kill Wadia
The Bombay Dyeing-Reliance Industries feud took a startling twist with the arrest of senior Reliance executive Kirti Ambani on the charge of conspiring to kill Bombay Dyeing Chairman Nusli Wadia. A volatile mix of politics, crime and business, it is the political dimension of the case that is most intriguing.
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Raghu Nandan DharM. RAHMAN.Prabhu Chawla
August 31, 1989
ISSUE DATE: August 31, 1989UPDATED: October 30, 2013 17:56 IST
The protagonists are a study in contrast. On one side, Dhirubhai Ambani, a street-smart operator whose rags-to-riches story has rewritten corporate history and radically changed the rules of the market-place. And ranged against him, Nusli Wadia, a suave, sophisticated tycoon descended from centuries of empire builders.
The contrast does not end there. Ambani presides over the fastest-growing industrial group in the country with assets of Rs 3,875 crore. Wadia is chairman of Bombay Dyeing, a conservative institution with assets of just Rs 259 crore.
Despite that, their battle has become one of the fiercest and most personalised in Indian corporate history, involving not just business rivalry but also the most powerful personages in the country. But now, even by their extreme standards, what is unfolding is, possibly, the bloodiest chapter in the cutthroat war.
The arrest last fortnight of Kirti Ambani, a senior employee of Ambani's Reliance Industries for conspiring to murder Wadia, exploded like a well-timed bomb, shaking the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the corporate sector, and, above all, the political establishment.
By last week, as Kirti, 48, Reliance general manager (public relations), was finally released on bail after spending sleepless nights in a dingy Bombay police lock-up, the case had created ripples that reached the office of the prime minister, caused deep rifts in the ruling party, and almost jeopardised the career of Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar. The reason for the widespread tremors: the tentacles of the Ambani empire reach into every corner of the Government's power structure, while Wadia has the unrelenting backing of the Ramnath Goenka-owned Indian Express newspaper chain. Wadia is also a good friend of Pawar.
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Claims and Counterclaims
Ambani Camp
Why would the Ambanis want to eliminate Nusli Wadia? He is much too insignificant a business rival for them to take such an extreme and foolhardy risk.
They are among the fastest growing industrial houses in the country. They have no need to stoop to such criminal activities at this stage of their growth.
Nusli Wadia blames his business set-backs on the Ambanis. He is trying to retaliate by taking the support of the Indian Express group.
This is a frame-up essentially aimed at undermining the unprecedented Rs 920-crore public issue of Larsen and Toubro to be launched in a few weeks from now.
Why would they hire a small time criminal like Babaria? If they had to eliminate Nusli Wadia, they would have surely employed a professional killer who could do the job quickly and efficiently.
Wadia Camp
Dhirubhai's sons, Anil and Mukesh, hold Nusli Wadia responsible for the stroke which almost crippled their father in 1986 following the pressure put on him by V.P. Singh and the Indian Express.
Wadia would be a major source of information about the Ambani's business dealings if a new government headed by V.P. Singh is formed.
By silencing Wadia, the Ambanis will silence the Indian Express. They believe Wadia is keeping the Express afloat.
The conspiracy to kill Wadia was hatched months before Ambani applied for the L & T share issue.
Since all the top hit men of Bombay have recently been liquidated or arrested in the police crackdown, there was no choice.
It is these larger dimensions that have given the case a sensational twist, as has the modus operandi for the alleged plot - hiring contract killers from Bombay's underworld to eliminate Wadia. Though the Ambanis have been tight-lipped, apart from a press release on the day of the arrest terming the case "a frame-up", the Bombay police seemed to have a substantial case.
The two men involved in the investigation, Police Commissioner Vasant Keshaorao Saraf, 55, and Joint Commissioner (Crime) Arvind Siddeshwar Inamdar, 48, have impeccable reputations. But even they were startled last month when a senior Crime Branch inspector reported a meeting with an underworld contact in which he learnt of a 'supari' contract floated last November. 'Supari' contracts, in which gangsters are paid to carry out a killing, are nothing unusual in Bombay's underworld. But the target of this one was someone special: Nusli Neville Wadia.
The events that followed exposed the explosive implications of the case.
July 12: A day after Wadia landed in Bombay after a trip abroad, Saraf detailed a team to protect him.
July 17: Saraf sought a meeting with Pawar, met him along with Inamdar, and detailed the extraordinary dimensions of the case. Worried that the information would leak to the Ambanis, the two police officers insisted that only the chief minister who is in charge of the home portfolio, and Home Secretary S. Ramamoorthi be briefed. Minister of State for Home Vilas Sawant who is said to be close to the Ambanis was kept in the dark.
July 20: Ramamoorthi wrote to his counterpart at the Centre, detailing the case, emphasising its seriousness, requesting that Union Home Minister Buta Singh be informed, and suggesting that the CBI be asked to take over investigations.
July 23: Getting no response from New Delhi, Ramamoorthi sent another letter asking for instructions.
July 28: With the Centre still maintaining a deafening silence, Pawar gave the signal for the arrest of Kirti Ambani who was out of Bombay; the police decided to wait.
July 28: CBI boss Mohan Katre, known for his close links with the Ambanis, flew in to Bombay. Unusually, Katre went to the Bombay High Court where Wadia's visa case was being heard even though the CBI had nothing to do with it.
July 31: Kirti returned to Bombay from Patalganga. At 7.30 p.m., Crime Branch officers visited his office at Nariman Point and then accompanied him to his plush residence situated in Twin Towers complex, a lane away from Wadia's idyllic beach-side bungalow. While the house was being searched, another posse of officers picked up Arjun Waghji Babaria, 35, from his modest, powder-blue tin shack in the backyard of the Bhendi Bazaar Police Quarters. Babaria, a podgy, goateed drummer who called himself 'Prince Babaria' was known to be a 'fixer' who arranged contract crimes.
August 1: Kirti Ambani and Babaria remanded to police custody.
The arrest and subsequent details of the case left observers dumbstruck. Kirti is known to journalists as an amiable, soft-spoken .public relations man who often acted as a spokesman for Reliance. But since 1985, he had also been in touch with Babaria. In an album seized from Babaria's house, police found photographs of the two together. They also found newspaper photographs of Wadia and his black-topped Buick.
The Bombay Dyeing-Reliance Industries feud took a startling twist with the arrest of senior Reliance executive Kirti Ambani on the charge of conspiring to kill Bombay Dyeing Chairman Nusli Wadia. A volatile mix of politics, crime and business, it is the political dimension of the case that is most intriguing.
ADVERTISEMENT
Raghu Nandan DharM. RAHMAN.Prabhu Chawla
August 31, 1989
ISSUE DATE: August 31, 1989UPDATED: October 30, 2013 17:56 IST
The protagonists are a study in contrast. On one side, Dhirubhai Ambani, a street-smart operator whose rags-to-riches story has rewritten corporate history and radically changed the rules of the market-place. And ranged against him, Nusli Wadia, a suave, sophisticated tycoon descended from centuries of empire builders.
The contrast does not end there. Ambani presides over the fastest-growing industrial group in the country with assets of Rs 3,875 crore. Wadia is chairman of Bombay Dyeing, a conservative institution with assets of just Rs 259 crore.
Despite that, their battle has become one of the fiercest and most personalised in Indian corporate history, involving not just business rivalry but also the most powerful personages in the country. But now, even by their extreme standards, what is unfolding is, possibly, the bloodiest chapter in the cutthroat war.
The arrest last fortnight of Kirti Ambani, a senior employee of Ambani's Reliance Industries for conspiring to murder Wadia, exploded like a well-timed bomb, shaking the judiciary, the bureaucracy, the corporate sector, and, above all, the political establishment.
By last week, as Kirti, 48, Reliance general manager (public relations), was finally released on bail after spending sleepless nights in a dingy Bombay police lock-up, the case had created ripples that reached the office of the prime minister, caused deep rifts in the ruling party, and almost jeopardised the career of Maharashtra Chief Minister Sharad Pawar. The reason for the widespread tremors: the tentacles of the Ambani empire reach into every corner of the Government's power structure, while Wadia has the unrelenting backing of the Ramnath Goenka-owned Indian Express newspaper chain. Wadia is also a good friend of Pawar.
ADVERTISEMENT
Claims and Counterclaims
Ambani Camp
Why would the Ambanis want to eliminate Nusli Wadia? He is much too insignificant a business rival for them to take such an extreme and foolhardy risk.
They are among the fastest growing industrial houses in the country. They have no need to stoop to such criminal activities at this stage of their growth.
Nusli Wadia blames his business set-backs on the Ambanis. He is trying to retaliate by taking the support of the Indian Express group.
This is a frame-up essentially aimed at undermining the unprecedented Rs 920-crore public issue of Larsen and Toubro to be launched in a few weeks from now.
Why would they hire a small time criminal like Babaria? If they had to eliminate Nusli Wadia, they would have surely employed a professional killer who could do the job quickly and efficiently.
Wadia Camp
Dhirubhai's sons, Anil and Mukesh, hold Nusli Wadia responsible for the stroke which almost crippled their father in 1986 following the pressure put on him by V.P. Singh and the Indian Express.
Wadia would be a major source of information about the Ambani's business dealings if a new government headed by V.P. Singh is formed.
By silencing Wadia, the Ambanis will silence the Indian Express. They believe Wadia is keeping the Express afloat.
The conspiracy to kill Wadia was hatched months before Ambani applied for the L & T share issue.
Since all the top hit men of Bombay have recently been liquidated or arrested in the police crackdown, there was no choice.
It is these larger dimensions that have given the case a sensational twist, as has the modus operandi for the alleged plot - hiring contract killers from Bombay's underworld to eliminate Wadia. Though the Ambanis have been tight-lipped, apart from a press release on the day of the arrest terming the case "a frame-up", the Bombay police seemed to have a substantial case.
The two men involved in the investigation, Police Commissioner Vasant Keshaorao Saraf, 55, and Joint Commissioner (Crime) Arvind Siddeshwar Inamdar, 48, have impeccable reputations. But even they were startled last month when a senior Crime Branch inspector reported a meeting with an underworld contact in which he learnt of a 'supari' contract floated last November. 'Supari' contracts, in which gangsters are paid to carry out a killing, are nothing unusual in Bombay's underworld. But the target of this one was someone special: Nusli Neville Wadia.
The events that followed exposed the explosive implications of the case.
July 12: A day after Wadia landed in Bombay after a trip abroad, Saraf detailed a team to protect him.
July 17: Saraf sought a meeting with Pawar, met him along with Inamdar, and detailed the extraordinary dimensions of the case. Worried that the information would leak to the Ambanis, the two police officers insisted that only the chief minister who is in charge of the home portfolio, and Home Secretary S. Ramamoorthi be briefed. Minister of State for Home Vilas Sawant who is said to be close to the Ambanis was kept in the dark.
July 20: Ramamoorthi wrote to his counterpart at the Centre, detailing the case, emphasising its seriousness, requesting that Union Home Minister Buta Singh be informed, and suggesting that the CBI be asked to take over investigations.
July 23: Getting no response from New Delhi, Ramamoorthi sent another letter asking for instructions.
July 28: With the Centre still maintaining a deafening silence, Pawar gave the signal for the arrest of Kirti Ambani who was out of Bombay; the police decided to wait.
July 28: CBI boss Mohan Katre, known for his close links with the Ambanis, flew in to Bombay. Unusually, Katre went to the Bombay High Court where Wadia's visa case was being heard even though the CBI had nothing to do with it.
July 31: Kirti returned to Bombay from Patalganga. At 7.30 p.m., Crime Branch officers visited his office at Nariman Point and then accompanied him to his plush residence situated in Twin Towers complex, a lane away from Wadia's idyllic beach-side bungalow. While the house was being searched, another posse of officers picked up Arjun Waghji Babaria, 35, from his modest, powder-blue tin shack in the backyard of the Bhendi Bazaar Police Quarters. Babaria, a podgy, goateed drummer who called himself 'Prince Babaria' was known to be a 'fixer' who arranged contract crimes.
August 1: Kirti Ambani and Babaria remanded to police custody.
The arrest and subsequent details of the case left observers dumbstruck. Kirti is known to journalists as an amiable, soft-spoken .public relations man who often acted as a spokesman for Reliance. But since 1985, he had also been in touch with Babaria. In an album seized from Babaria's house, police found photographs of the two together. They also found newspaper photographs of Wadia and his black-topped Buick.
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