Apollo Tyres ordered to return 4.95% ‘Harshad Mehta share’
Almost 20 years ago, Harshad Mehta achieved infamy in India through an engineered rise in the Bombay Stock Exchange that became known as the ‘securities scam’. After the stock broker’s activities came to light in mid-1992, a number of Mehta’s assets were sold off as part of court proceedings. This sale included 5,488,850 shares in Apollo Tyres, equal to 15.1 per cent of the company’s equity, which were purchased by Apollo and its managing family the Kanwars in April 2003. Now the Supreme Court in New Delhi has ordered Apollo Tyres to return a portion of these acquired shares to the Mehta family custodian. A two-judge Supreme Court bench accepted in part the appeal of Ashwin Mehta, brother of Harshad Mehta (who died in 2002) challenging the Mumbai Special Court’s 2001 order that allowed the sale of bulk holding shares back to Apollo Tyres.