The Singh brothers are accused of misappropriating funds of Religare Finvest Ltd.

A Delhi court today sent former Ranbaxy promoter Malvinder Singh and his brother Shivinder Singh to judicial custody in a Rs. 2,397 crore fraud case. They will be lodged at Tihar jail.

Metropolitan Magistrate Nishant Garg sent Malvinder and Shivender Singh along with Sunil Godhwani, Anil Saxena and Kavi Arora to 14-day judicial custody. While Sunil Godhwani was former chairman and managing director of Religare Enterprises Ltd (REL), Kavi Arora and Anil Saxena occupied important positions in REL and Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL).

The Singh brothers had moved a bail plea which will be heard later along with that of Arora tomorrow.

Shivinder Singh, his older brother Malvinder were charged with cheating, fraud and misappropriation of funds five months after Religare Finvest Limited filed a complaint against them in December.

The First Information Report (FIR) states that the accused who had total control of Religare put the firm in a financially weak condition by way of disposing the loans to the companies. The FIR also states that those companies were controlled by them, but they had no financial standing.

The Singh brothers managed the operations of the multi-billion dollar Ranbaxy Laboratories Ltd founded by their father. In 2008, they sold it to Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo and focused on the family-owned Fortis Healthcare, a hospital chain, and Religare Enterprises, a financial services firm.

In 2013, Daiichi moved an arbitration tribunal in Singapore alleging that the brothers, while selling Ranbaxy, had concealed information about the US Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Justice investigating the company. The tribunal in 2016 ordered the Singhs to pay Daiichi Rs. 2,562 crore. The brothers challenged the decision but in 2017, the Delhi High Court ordered them to pay up.