Actress Shilpa Shetty and her husband, Raj Kundra, have been charged with defrauding a Bombay-based businessman of Rs. 60 crore. Deepak Kothari has alleged that he had given the couple Rs. 60 crore for expansion of their business, Best Deal TV Pvt. Ltd., between 2015 and 2023, but they spent the money for personal expenses. He was promised that the money would be returned on time but that did not happen, he said.
According to Kothari, he transferred the first instalment of about Rs. 31.95 crore in April 2015. The second instalment of Rs. 28.54 crore, he added, was transferred between July 2015 and March 2016. He also paid Rs. 3.19 lakh as stamp duty. He said, Shilpa had given him personal guarantee in April 2016, but she resigned as the company’s director in September that year. Soon after, an insolvency case of Rs. 1.28 crore was filed against the company, about which Deepak Kothari was not aware. He claimed, his repeated requests for his money fell on deaf ears.
Kothari’s case of forgery and cheating was initially filed at the Juhu police station in Bombay, but it was later handed over to the Economic Offences Wing. The EOW is now probing the case.
Shilpa and Raj denied the allegations and said, they were civil in nature and there was no criminality involved.