The apex court had earlier asked the Singh brothers to give it a plan as to how they would honour the arbitral award of Rs 3,500 crore granted by a Singapore tribunal against them, in favour of Japanese drug manufacturer Daiichi Sankyo.

The Supreme Court on Friday held former Ranbaxy promoters — brothers Malvinder Singh and Shivinder Singh — guilty of contempt for violating its earlier orders that had restrained them from divesting their shares in Fortis Healthcare.

However, it gave them one more chance to purge themselves of the contempt if they deposited Rs 1,170.95 crore each within eight weeks. It also said that the brothers would be heard later on the quantum of sentence.

The apex court had earlier asked the Singh brothers to give it a plan as to how they would honour the arbitral award of Rs 3,500 crore granted by a Singapore tribunal against them, in favour of Japanese drug manufacturer Daiichi Sankyo.

The Japanese firm had filed a contempt petition against them alleging that execution of their arbitral award had been in jeopardy as the Singh brothers disposed of their controlling stakes in Fortis Group to a Malaysian firm, IHH Healthcare.

The SC also held six directors of Indiabulls Housing Finance and Indiabulls Ventures, including Sameer Gehlaut, guilty of contempt. The judges said that they had “knowingly and wilfully” disobeyed its orders of August 11 and 31, 2017, and February 15 and 23, 2018.

The Singh brothers are currently in Tihar jail in the case filed by Religare FinVest (RFL) — an arm of Religare Enterprises(REL) — for allegedly causing wrongful loss worth Rs 2,397 crore.

The apex court also directed its registry to initiate another suo motu contempt proceedings against the brothers and Fortis Healthcare, for having wilfully violated its December 14 order by which it had put on hold the sale of controlling stake (31%) in FHL to Malaysian firm IHH Healthcare for Rs 4,000 crore on a contempt plea filed by Daiichi Sankyo against the former promoters.

It also issued contempt notice to them to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt. The contemnors will have to be present in the court on February 3, the next date of hearing.

The Supreme Court had in August 2017 refused to allow the brothers to sell their encumbered and unencumbered shares held by one of their companies in Fortis Healthcare to reduce their debt burden.

On Indiabulls, the court said that it will hear the directors “on the question of sentence. We afford an opportunity to these contemnors to purge themselves of the contempt by depositing the value of 12,25,000 shares as on August 31, 2017 in the Bombay Stock Exchange within eight weeks. In case, the said respondents purge themselves of the contempt, we may take a lenient view while imposing sentence”.

IndiaBulls through its counsel Mahesh Agarwal offered to deposit Rs 17 crore, the value of shares, on Friday itself. Indiabulls had transferred pledged shares of Fortis Healthcare held by Fortis Healthcare Holding to itself. However, it had claimed that the pledge of shares in its favour by RHC was created in 2016, much before the SC orders were passed.