Shivinder Singh, in his NCLT filing in July this year, had attached an emotional letter he wrote to his elder brother Malvinder Singh in 2017. In the letter placed before the NLCT, Shivinder requested his brother to give him the control of Religare group, including Fortis Healthcare, to make things right at the crisis-hit company. Shivinder's letter, accessed by BusinessToday.In, said if Malvinder wasn't okay with the idea, he should assure Shivinder to make things right.
"This is not a usual brotherly letter so I would request you to please think of this as a letter from your equal and long-term business partner with who you' have dealt in some capacity or the other for over 40 years," Shivinder's letter said.
Talking about the reason behind his purported 'sanyas' (asceticism), the younger brother said he had decided to give up the world of "position and fame" because of "constant conflict between the two (Singh brothers)" over the handling of Fortis.
He said he "was never really keen on other businesses in the group -- and always felt that I was in this Fortis bubble". He said it was an "absolute error of judgement for him and that he was paying the price for that".
Shivinder tells his brother in the letter that he had realised they had made things worse for their group due to their different working styles.
Proposing his revival plan for the group, Shivinder says: "We will need to cust costs across the system so that we step cash flow and save for coming back tom(tomorrow) and will need your cooperation for that!"
He also expressed administration concerns in the letter, saying: "management is going rogue! Fortis is cash strapped and any day things can slip out of hand."
He also requested his elder brother to hand over the helm of affairs to him, and said: "...it's best to fix and change a business partnership when it's not delivering results and we've tried to make music together but it's only coming out as noise."
Meanwhile, Malvinder, in his NCLT filing in August, said he deserved the right to take suitable legal action against his brother Shivinder for making "scurrilous insinuations".
Notably, both of them, Malvinder and Shivinder, are currently in jail after Delhi's Saket court sent them and 3 others to judicial custody till October 31 in a fund misappropriation case related to Religare Finvest Ltd. The other three accused - former Religare CMD Sunil Godhwani, and former senior executives Kavi Arora and Anil Saxena - are also in jail.
Also read: Daiichi case: Delhi HC orders RSSB chief Dhillon & family, Singh brothers, Ghodhwanis to be present in court on November 14Edited by Manoj Sharma