The Supreme Court sentenced real estate developer Dharmesh Jain to seven days’ simple imprisonment on May 14, under the Contempt of Courts Act. He will have to serve the sentence at a civil prison in Byculla when he surrenders.
Two months earlier, the SC had held him guilty for wilful disobedience of its October 2021 order and of a Bombay HC order dated August 8, 2019. The HC had directed him to deposit a certain amount following an arbitral award of Rs 78 crore against him and Nirmal Infrastructure Pvt Ltd of which he is a director, in a commercial dispute with Urban Infrastructure Real Estate Fund over a share purchase agreement.
The SC had, as a “last chance”, kept its sentence in abeyance for two weeks to allow Jain to “purge the contempt and comply with the orders”. The SC bench of Justice M R Shah and Justice B V Nagarathna said “failing which …Jain will then surrender before the concerned court or authority to undergo the sentence…”. The SC also imposed a fine of Rs five lakh to be deposited before the HC in 2 weeks from which Rs 1 lakh is to be given to the state legal aid services authority and Rs 4 lakh to the Fund.
The matter is listed before the Bombay HC vacation bench on May 27. Jain and Nirmal Infrastructure had approached the SC against the HC order. The SC had on September 17, 2021, extended time to comply with the HC order.
The Fund, too, moved the SC last year seeking contempt action against the developer for ‘non compliance’. Jain’s counsel said there was no direction issued by the SC for which non-compliance is alleged, and that the HC order itself said that on non-compliance the stay would be vacated. The SC said even after “granting him and his company sufficient opportunities, neither the orders have been complied with nor the dispute settled.”
