Tata Group hounds a whistleblower | Upal Chakraborty

An intriguing criminal case (Case No. CRR 2540 of 2024) has come up in Calcutta High Court and is expected to unravel the unholy nexus between corporates, criminals, Govt officials and Police. Notices have been issued to the Govt of West Bengal, a Tata Group company, the insurance regulator IRDAI, the Chaudhary Charan Singh University (erstwhile Meerut University) and an individual by the name of Mr. Tarun Samant.

The original FIR was registered in the year 2020 in the Park Street Police Station of Kolkata. The main accused, Mr. Tarun Samant, is accused of forgery and duping his Company and the public at large through forged documents and the other entities are accused of supporting him. As per police sources, a written complaint was filed by the complainant against Mr. Natarajan Chandrasekharan, the Tata Sons Chairman, also, for exploiting his position to protect the perpetrators and subsequently harassing the victim, as explained in details below.

The company involved is a little-known Tata Group Company that goes by the name of Tata Motors Insurance Broking & Advisory Services Limited or TMIBASL, a wholly owned subsidiary of Tata Motors. It is an insurance broking firm operating under the rules and regulations laid down by the insurance regulator IRDAI.

Let us delve into details of this unsavoury episode.

An individual by the name of Pijush Kanti Roy was employed in the capacity of Senior Manager at the company Tata Motors Insurance Broking & Advisory Services Ltd (TMIBASL) Kolkata office. He had joined the company in the year 2014. The IRDAI (Insurance Regulatory Development Authority of India) rules specifically state that the Chief Executive/ Principal Officer of an Insurance Broking Company needs to possess a University Graduate Degree as a minimum qualification. It is a statutory requirement. In due course of his employment, Roy started receiving emails from anonymous identities claiming to be whistle-blowers who attached copies of the PO’s self-attested forged degree. An NGO, by the name of Arise India Foundation, complained to the Chairman of IRDA, the Vice-Chancellor of Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut, Cyrus Mistry - the TATA Group Chairman at that point in time - and the Police Commissioner of Mumbai. They claimed that the Principal Officer of the company, Tarun Kumar Samant (or Sawant) held a fake degree from Meerut University (presently Chaudhuri Charan Singh University) and provided different versions of self-attested versions of his graduation certificate. One bore the name of Tarun Kumar Sawant and it mentioned subjects pursued as English, Economics and Political Science with General English in the General Course, with the signature and official stamp of the Vice-Chancellor of the university only – and the second carried the name of Tarun Kumar Samant, subjects being Economics, Political Science and English Literature with General English in the General Course, and the signatures carried were that of the Registrar and the Vice-Chancellor with an official stamp.

Apprehensive that this piece of news, if true, violated statutory compliances of IRDAI with a potential of causing embarrassment to both TMIBASL and the Tata Group, Mr. Pijush Roy decided to pursue the matter. He did this internally and took up the issue verbally with his seniors, and subsequently through official channels to company authorities and the top brass of Tata Group including the then Chairman, Mr. Cyrus Mistry. His actions were totally in compliance with the Tata Code of Conduct or TCOC as laid down here:

“We do not tolerate any form of retaliation against anyone reporting legitimate concerns. Anyone involved in targeting such a person will be subject to disciplinary action. If you suspect that you or someone you know has been subjected to retaliation for raising a concern or for reporting a case, we encourage you to promptly contact your line manager (and if it does not yield results, report to the higher-level supervisor), the company’s Ethics Counsellor, the Human Resources department, the MD/CEO, or the office of the group’s Chief Ethics Officer.”

As a “reward” for his bold action, he was terminated from service on the 5th of August 2016 on grounds of insubordination.

His contention was later validated by the IRDA. On the 2nd of May 2017, the body issued a letter to the Chairman of TMIBASL directing him “to remove Tarun Kumar Samant (or Sawant) as the PO of the broking company with immediate effect”. The letter was signed by one Randip Singh Jagpal, Chief General Manager, IRDAI. The insurance regulator IRDAI, in turn, was compelled by the order of the Central Information Commission of India to publish this news on their official website. The link for the same is https://irdai.gov.in/document-detail?documentId=391359

The letter from IRDAI establishes the fact that in February 2016, even before Pijush Roy had raised the issue in April, 2016, the concerned university itself had invalidated the graduation degree after it was reported to them. The copy of the order was obtained by a relative of Pijush Roy through the Right to Information Act both from the insurance regulator IRDAI and the office of the Central Information Commissioner of India.

The Central Information Commissioner of India during the hearing stated:
“On being queried by the Commission regarding the nature of the complaint and the action taken thereon, the Respondent submitted that consequent to an enquiry conducted by the Public Authority, the said officer was removed from the post of Pr. Officer of Tata Motors Insurance Brokerage and Advisory Services Ltd. since he did not fulfil the qualifications required for such a position…”

Further, the CIC opined that

“……. The complaint made by the Appellant having been proved correct about wrong disclosure of the qualifications of the Pr. Officer of the said advisory services firm is tantamount to duping and cheating the gullible public and therefore strict penal action were warranted in such cases……”

Another RTI by the lawyer of Pijush Roy to IRDAI further confirmed that after the removal of that person from the statutory post for want of a mandatory qualification, neither he, nor the company TMIBASL nor the Tata Group appealed for the revocation of that decision or challenged the same in any forum or Court of Law, which implies tacit acceptance. In the same reply, IRDAI also confirmed that no legal or penal action were initiated on their behalf against this act of forgery or cheating.

It was, therefore, established beyond a pale of doubt that the gentleman concerned was guilty of forgery and deserved stringent punishment. Nonetheless, instead of going after the criminal, the Tata Group is pursuing, with vengeance, a hapless terminated employee – an employee who was dismissed because he officially raised this issue initially with his immediate reporting authority and then raised this with the topmost level of the Group during the chairmanship of Cyrus Mistry. He even communicated the matter to Mr. Ratan Tata against which there was an official acknowledgement and an assurance of a proper enquiry.

An FIR was instead registered in the Cyber Crime Cell of Mumbai Police against the employee, Mr. Pijush Roy, on a complaint by one Bhanu Bhai Sharma, the CFO and Chief Compliance Officer of TMIBASL. It is worth mentioning that on 20th September, 2016, Bhanu Bhai Sharma was present with Tarun Kumar Samant or Sawant in the meeting with officials of IRDAI on the issue of validity of the university degree. Mr. Pijush Kanti Roy was arrested by the Mumbai Police on the basis of false and frivolous charges, which they have still not able to include in a chargesheet, let alone convict him – although he is on bail now. To further add to his harassment, the company TMIBASL and the individual Tarun Kumar Samant or Sawant jointly filed a defamation suit for Rs. 100 crores in Bombay High Court in “original side”, which implies that the plaintiffs have to deposit a certain amount as court fees to the Bombay High Court. The question is – who deposited this sum?

Desperate appeals from the wife of Pijush Roy to both the Late Mr. Ratan Tata and Mr. Natarjan Chandrasekharan failed to move either of them or the officials reporting in to them.

Pijush Roy then filed a FIR in the Park Street Police Station of Kolkata with all the documents obtained through multiple RTI appeals. Case No. 66 dated 21.03.2020 under stringent non-bailable sections - 120B/463/464/465/467/468/420 IPC. Strangely, the Kolkata Police remained conspicuously silent on this case for almost three years but after the writ petition lodged by Pijush Roy in Kolkata High Court, Kolkata Police hurriedly filed a closure report, branding the complaint as a “Mistake of Facts” maintaining that “no forgery and cheating had taken place”. However, the Kolkata High Court allowed Pijush Roy to legally challenge that Closure Report in a higher Kolkata Court.

Now, the matter has once again come up before Calcutta High Court who has issued the order (CRR No. 2540 of the year 2024) to the concerned parties i.e. The Govt of West Bengal, the individual Tarun Kumar Samant (or Sawant) and TMIBASL the insurance regulator IRDAI, and the Chaudhary Charan Singh University, Meerut as stated at the beginning of this article. It is expected that the matter will come up for further hearing very soon.

An arguably important aspect is that the Supreme Court of India has granted liberty to Pijush Roy to legally challenge all the cases filed against him. Also worth mentioning is that, earlier in 2016, Tata Sons, the company TMIBASL and Mr. Sawant approached Delhi High Court and not Bombay High Court under whose jurisdiction they were situated, claiming that false information was spread against the CEO about his qualification. However, after Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw of Delhi High Court ordered an investigation into the allegation of his false qualification, the appellants including Tata Sons backed out of the case.

Recently, the complainants filed another application for Bail Cancellation in the Mumbai Trial court. Yet, for the one and half years the accused parties have sought repeated adjournments and further time whenever the case has come up for hearing. Do they not have any ready evidence to indict Pijush Roy in a case that saw him incarcerated for a considerable period of time?

Meanwhile, two more frivolous cases were filed against Pijush – one in the Court of the Judicial Magistrate, Roorkee, in the State of Uttarakhand, a State he last visited in the year 2000 and another false case of physical assault in Kolkata under IPC 323, seven-eight years after his termination. Expensive lawyers are travelling all the way from Mumbai and appearing in this case in the Trial Court of Kolkata.

It is a clear case of vendetta against an employee who upheld the Truth by forces acting in concert - that includes an employee dismissed from service on grounds of forgery and the Tata Group as a whole through its designated representatives. If Mr. Pijush Roy fails to obtain justice, it will be indeed a sad day for the whistleblowing community as a whole.