Posted on 24th February, 2026 (GMT 06:25 hrs)
An Independent OBMA Investigative Exposé
ABSTRACT
The DHFL insolvency resolution, culminating in its acquisition by Piramal Capital and Housing Finance (now Piramal Finance) and the February 2, 2026, Mumbai PMLA Special Court discharge from a ₹5,050 crore money-laundering case under Section 32A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC), exemplifies alleged systemic flaws in India’s insolvency framework. This “clean slate” immunity extinguished corporate criminal liability for pre-CIRP offences while preserving prosecution against former promoters like the Wadhawan brothers, despite their ignored full-repayment proposals. Critics portray the process—marked by retrospective Section 32A insertion in December 2019 just before DHFL’s CIRP admission, Ajay Piramal’s January 2019 “shock” prediction preceding the Cobrapost exposé, massive creditor haircuts (54–77% on retail FDs/NCDs), nominal Re 1 valuation for ₹45,000 crore Section 66 avoidance recoveries benefiting Piramal, and upheld “commercial wisdom” in the Supreme Court’s April 1, 2025, judgment—as engineered cronyism favoring politically connected acquirers via electoral bond donations (Piramal entities contributed significantly to BJP coffers per 2024 ECI data), family ties to Ambani, Flashnet deal controversies, and PM CARES funding. Amid Piramal Finance’s resurgence (AUM ₹96,690 crore up 23% YoY, 9M FY26 PAT ₹1,004 crore up 162%, CRISIL AA+ rating), victim groups decry SLAPP suits silencing dissent, statutory contradictions prioritizing new owners over creditors, and demand full repeal of Section 32A to dismantle what they term a sophisticated mechanism of crony enrichment at the expense of lakhs of ordinary depositors’ savings.
DISCLAIMER: This document, compiled and correlated solely from publicly available facts, court records, official disclosures, parliamentary data, media investigations, and regulatory filings, represents the collective effort of OBMA founder-members to present a factual exposé of recurring patterns documented across credible public sources—without making any personal allegations against individuals, but simply connecting dots that have been reported, adjudicated, or officially released over the years. Our sole purpose is to offer ordinary citizens, particularly the affected DHFL depositors, a single coherent narrative of the sequence of events, legal maneuvers, corporate restructurings, political-financial linkages, and judicial outcomes surrounding the DHFL resolution, enabling them to see the full picture and draw their own conclusions from verifiable information. Having ourselves faced—and continuing to face—legal intimidation through SLAPP-style defamation suits precisely for exercising the democratic right to collate and comment on public-domain material, this note also serves as a firm statement of resolve: free speech and public-interest scrutiny cannot and will not be silenced by litigation intended to chill dissent. OBMA reaffirms its unwavering commitment to transparency, accountability, and justice for the lakhs of DHFL victims whose life savings were wiped out while a politically connected acquirer received a clean-slate entity with massive upside—urging every reader to verify the cited sources independently and decide for themselves.
I. Introduction
In February 2026, a Mumbai PMLA Special Court discharged Piramal Finance (formerly Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Limited, or DHFL) from a ₹5,050 crore money-laundering case. The judicial fig leaf? Section 32A of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code — the single most dangerous provision ever inserted into Indian statute books. In an order dated 2 February 2026 by Special Judge R.B. Rote, the court granted statutory immunity under Section 32A, extinguishing corporate criminal liability for pre-CIRP offences and allowing the entity to start on a “clean slate” — while former promoters and individuals (viz., the Wadhawan brothers, who wanted to pay all the creditors in full for multiple times, but were left unheard) remain prosecutable.
Special court discharges DHFL in money laundering case, cites immunity under IBC VIEW HERE ⤡ (As reported on 5th February, 2026 ©ET Legal World)
This was never “insolvency reform.” This was a pre-meditated political operation dressed in the language of economic liberalisation. And DHFL was deliberately chosen as the test case to legitimise the entire IBC project while saving the Modi government’s face after years of NBFC carnage. But was this able to “save” the image, or tarnish it beyond recovery?
The acquisition itself was structured as a reverse merger: Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited (PCHFL) merged into DHFL effective 30 September 2021, with DHFL as the surviving entity. The combined company was immediately rebranded as Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Limited (later shortened to Piramal Finance in subsequent restructurings, including a 2025 reverse merger absorbing Piramal Enterprises Ltd. into the lending arm). This shrewd corporate choreography — reverse merger, rebranding, and entity shuffling — enabled the group to effectively disown or distance itself from DHFL’s tainted legacy while inheriting its assets, branch network, and loan book.
Critically, the resolution plan ascribed a notional value of exactly Re 1 to avoidance transactions (including Section 66 fraudulent/wrongful trading recoveries) estimated at ₹45,000 crore in forensic audits — handing this speculative upside to Piramal as Successful Resolution Applicant (SRA), while creditors bore massive haircuts (54–77% on retail fixed deposits and NCDs held by lakhs of ordinary families). The Supreme Court’s 1 April 2025 judgment upheld this as valid “commercial wisdom,” seemingly sealing the transfer.
It did not merely “resolve” a stressed asset. It delivered a ₹91,000-crore AAA-rated ongoing profitable non-banking housing finance company (note that DHFL was not a ponzi scheme!), complete with its avoidance-transaction upside worth ₹45,000 crore (valued at Re 1), straight into the hands of Ajay Piramal on a silver platter — while extinguishing every trace of criminal liability for the corporate debtor through layered restructurings that obscured continuity with the old DHFL.
II. The Retrospective Trap: Engineered from Day One
Section 32A was not an afterthought. It was rammed through with surgical timing.
- On 28 December 2019, the government promulgated the IBC (Amendment) Ordinance, 2019, inserting Section 32A with explicit retrospective effect from that very date.
- The Amendment Act received presidential assent on 13 March 2020, but Parliament made sure the clean-slate immunity applied from the ordinance date itself.
Now look at DHFL’s timeline:
- 20 November 2019: RBI supersedes DHFL’s board.
- 3 December 2019: NCLT admits DHFL for CIRP under the IBC — just five days after the ordinance that created Section 32A.
The sequence is not coincidence. It is conspiracy by calendar. The government first created the legal weapon (retrospective immunity), then triggered the very case that would test and sanctify it. DHFL was never a normal insolvency. It was the pilot project to prove that the IBC could deliver “resolution” even for the dirtiest, most politically toxic assets — provided the buyer was politically acceptable.
III. Piramal’s “Prediction” — The Smoking Gun of Pre-Planning?
On 28 January 2019, Ajay Piramal publicly declared: “Be prepared for one or two major shocks in the NBFC sector.”
The very next day — 29 January 2019 — Cobrapost dropped its explosive investigation exposing DHFL as “India’s biggest financial scam,” detailing the systematic siphoning of over ₹31,000 crore through shell companies.
How did Piramal know? One day before India’s biggest independent sting operation on the NBFC crisis? This is not market intelligence. This is foreknowledge bordering on insider information at a scale that should have triggered SEBI and Enforcement Directorate inquiries. Instead, the man who “predicted” the shock became the biggest beneficiary of the very collapse he foresaw.
The DHFL CIRP was not a spontaneous rescue. It was a pre-planned handover — first the expose, then the orchestrated RBI action, then the retrospective legal shield, and finally the gift-wrapped company to the man who had already signalled he was ready. Oaktree Capital — one of the competing resolution applicants — explicitly accused the Committee of Creditors (CoC) of being biased in favour of Piramal, alleging procedural irregularities, lack of transparency in evaluation, and undue preference given to Piramal’s plan despite Oaktree’s allegedly higher and more comprehensive offer. The Wadhawan brothers’ repeated full-repayment proposals were summarily ignored, while public depositors — who collectively held nearly 65% voting strength in the CoC — were never even comprehensively shown the settlement proposal of the Wadhawans. Everything falls into the pre-meditated pattern. It is way too easy to connect the dots.
IV. The Crony Proofs: Electoral Bonds, PM CARES, Flashnet, and Access
The “right buyer” was never in doubt. Publicly available reports, official Election Commission data, parliamentary records and opposition investigations have repeatedly pointed to a deep, mutually beneficial nexus (quid pro quo?!) between the BJP-led government and Ajay Piramal — described by critics as classic corporate-state collusion at the highest levels.
- Electoral Bonds (now declared unconstitutional): The Supreme Court struck down the entire Electoral Bonds Scheme on 15 February 2024 as violative of the right to information under Article 19(1)(a). Before that, Piramal Group entities poured ₹85–98 crore into the BJP’s coffers (SBI/ECI data released 2024). This included a ₹10 crore tranche from Piramal Capital & Housing Finance Ltd while it was still recording losses and paying zero or negative direct taxes — one of 33 loss-making companies that collectively donated ₹582 crore, of which 75% went to the BJP (The Hindu/Scroll analysis, April 2024). Critics call this textbook quid pro quo: opaque corporate funding to the ruling party in exchange for favourable treatment in stressed-asset resolutions.
- Flashnet Deal (2014 transaction, 2018 controversy): In July 2014, Piramal Estates Pvt Ltd bought Flashnet Info Solutions (India) Ltd — a near-dormant company owned by then-MP Piyush Goyal and his wife Seema Goyal — for ₹48 crore at a staggering premium (nearly 1,000% over book value of ~₹10.9 crore). Congress termed it a “murky saga of gratification, gross impropriety and conflict of interest” when the story broke in 2018, noting the timing coincided with Goyal’s elevation as Union Minister for Power & New and Renewable Energy — sectors where the Piramal Group was aggressively expanding. The BJP dismissed the charges as “baseless”, but the transaction remains a textbook exhibit in public discourse on crony linkages.
- Family & Proximity Ties: Ajay Piramal is secondary kin (samdhi) of Mukesh Ambani — one of the BJP and Modi-Shah dispensation’s closest and most powerful industrial allies — through the 2018 marriage of his son Anand Piramal to Ambani’s daughter Isha. This dynastic convergence is openly acknowledged in media and business circles.
- Direct Access & Opaque Funding: Ajay Piramal has co-chaired India-UK CEO forums under Prime Minister Modi, donated ₹25 crore to the PM CARES Fund, and sits on multiple government advisory panels. He enjoys repeated closed-door meetings with the Prime Minister (e.g. June 2018 Raj Bhavan CEO interaction and June 2020 virtual economic recovery meet – as per Economic Times and Business Standard reports). The PM CARES Fund itself is highly controversial: it uses the Prime Minister’s personal image and the official Ashok Stambha seal, yet is structured as a “non-governmental” private trust. This allows it to evade RTI applications and — as per a February 2026 PMO directive to the Lok Sabha Secretariat — even parliamentary questions on its accounts are ruled “not admissible”. What does this say about accountability when public imagery and state symbolism are used for a fund shielded from scrutiny?
Victim groups, opposition parties and independent analysts have repeatedly framed the entire sequence as a return gift: massive electoral funding + family-corporate proximity + ministerial dealings = a distressed ₹91,000-crore asset (plus ₹45,000 crore avoidance upside at Re 1) delivered via retrospective Section 32A immunity.
This is not speculation or defamation or character assassination of Mr. Piramal — these are all widely reported facts drawn from official SBI/ECI data, Supreme Court records, company filings, and contemporaneous media investigations as per public records. The pattern reveals systemic corporate-state collusion under the Modi regime, where politically connected conglomerates are rewarded while lakhs of ordinary depositors bear the losses.
V. The Fatal Internal Contradiction: Section 32A vs Section 66 of the Ill-Conceived IBC
The Code’s own incoherence exposes the fraud.
Section 66 explicitly states that recoveries from fraudulent or wrongful trading shall benefit all creditors. NCLAT, in its landmark 27 January 2022 order in the 63 Moons challenge, saw through the game: it held the resolution plan “discriminatory, illegal and full of material irregularities” and directed that Section 66 recoveries must go back to the CoC for the benefit of creditors — not to Piramal at a notional ₹1.
But Section 32A — the clean-slate immunity — was used to override this statutory mandate. The Supreme Court in its 1 April 2025 judgment ultimately sided with Piramal, sanctifying the ₹1 valuation and the transfer of speculative recoveries to the Successful Resolution Applicant (SRA).
This is not judicial interpretation. This is statutory self-contradiction weaponized. One section says fraud recoveries belong to creditors. Another section says the new owner gets total immunity and keeps the upside. The result? Public money socialized as haircuts (54–77% for 2.5 lakh retirees, pensioners and widows); private gains privatized to a BJP donor.
V.A. The Statutory Sleight of Hand: How the IBC Lets the SRA Pocket Section 66 Recoveries
The Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code contains no provision that automatically funnels “all the money” from avoidance recoveries to the Successful Resolution Applicant (SRA). Yet in the DHFL case, Piramal walked away with potential recoveries under Section 66 valued at a token Re 1 — while recoveries under Sections 43–51 went to the CoC/creditors.
Section 66 itself empowers the Adjudicating Authority to order contributions “to the assets of the corporate debtor” for the benefit of creditors generally. There is no statutory carve-out allowing these recoveries to be gifted to the SRA. The allocation flows solely from the approved resolution plan, rubber-stamped by the CoC’s “commercial wisdom” and upheld under Section 31.
The Supreme Court in its 1 April 2025 judgment explicitly sanctified this bifurcation as a “commercial bargain” — the SRA bears litigation risks and keeps any upside, while creditors get higher upfront certainty. The notional Re 1 valuation was called “reasonable” given the uncertainty.
This is textbook statutory sleight of hand. Section 66’s text speaks of creditor benefit — yet judicial deference allowed the SRA to pocket the speculative windfall. The very fraud that wrecked DHFL (and robbed lakhs of depositors) now potentially enriches the politically connected buyer who “predicted” the scandal. Section 32A’s clean-slate immunity completes the circle — extinguishing corporate liability so the new owner starts pristine, free to pursue (and keep) whatever Section 66 yields.
This is engineered extraction: Parliament provides the tools, the CoC negotiates the giveaway, courts defer to “commercial wisdom,” and the crony walks away richer. Undoubtedly, in contemporary India, the line of demarcation amid the judiciary and the political executive has increasingly withered away.
VI. The Corporate Triumph Amid Victim Silencing
While Piramal Finance celebrates soaring metrics — AUM crossing ₹96,690 crore (up 23% YoY), 9M FY26 consolidated PAT at ₹1,004 crore (up 162% YoY), fresh CRISIL AA+ rating, $350 million DFI funding from IFC & ADB, and $400 million ECB from global lenders — the lakhs of DHFL victims remain in limbo. Their life savings vanished in massive haircuts (54–77% for many fixed deposit and NCD holders), yet the company’s balance sheet expands unchecked.
This is the stark divide: explosive corporate resurgence built on the ruins of ordinary depositors’ trust.
Compounding the injustice, Piramal Capital and Housing Finance Limited (now Piramal Finance) — through its legal firm DSK Legal — has filed multiple defamation suits (widely described as SLAPP suits — Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation) against dissenting DHFL victims, activists, and members of groups like OBMA (Online Bloggers and Independent Digital Media Activists) since March 2023. These actions target individuals and platforms exercising democratic free speech on social media, blogs, and forums to highlight alleged irregularities in the resolution process, financial abuse, and crony elements. Critics argue these suits aim to intimidate, silence, and suppress legitimate criticism rather than address substantive defamation claims — a classic SLAPP tactic that burdens victims with legal costs and threats while shielding corporate power from accountability.
This is guilt laundering at industrial scale, now enforced through legal intimidation.
VII. The Demand: Repeal Section 32A Now
Section 32A must be repealed in its entirety. Not diluted, not narrowed — scrapped.
It was never a neutral economic tool. It was a retrospective legislative gift crafted at the exact moment DHFL was being herded into the IBC slaughterhouse, designed to protect politically favoured buyers while robbing small savers of both their money and their right to justice.
The IBC was legitimised by treating DHFL as its test case. The same IBC has now become the most sophisticated legal instrument of crony accumulation in independent India’s history.
Until Section 32A is repealed, every “resolution” under this Code will remain what DHFL truly was: not a rescue, but a heist — sanctioned by Parliament, sanctified by the Supreme Court, and executed by a politically connected billionaire who “predicted” the crime one day before the country found out.
The corporate metrics climb higher by the quarter. The forty-five-thousand-crore loot sits safely in Piramal’s balance sheet. And the lakhs of ruined families are still waiting for justice.
Repeal Section 32A. Dismantle the clean-slate fraud. Return what was “legally” stolen. Anything less is complicity in the greatest (=worst) financial dispossession of India’s middle class since Independence.
Scrap IBC!
SEE ALSO:
Scam 2019: The DHFL Massacre VIEW HERE⤡ @YouTube
Dear #DHFL_Victims, Use these posters and hashtags for online campaigning:
IBC Section 32A Explained | DHFL Piramal Takeover Analysis | Insolvency Code Critique | Crony Capitalism in India | Depositor Rights & Bankruptcy Law Reform | Financial Governance Crisis | Corporate Accountability Campaign
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