The Court of the Ld. Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate in Delhi, India, has ordered summonses to be issued against Raffles Education for a case the company thought was already closed.
According to a statement released by Raffles Education on June 2, summonses were also issued against some of the company’s current and former directors, namely: Chew Hua Seng, Lim How Teck, He Jun, Gan Hui Tin and Teo Cheng Lok.
The company’s employees, Chew Han Wei, Doris Chew, and John Tham, and a consultant to one of the company’s wholly-owned subsidiaries in India, Saurabh Sharma, also received summonses.
The summonses were in relation to allegations that extortion, theft, forgery, as well as "threats" or "intimidation" were committed against Shantanu Prakash and his associations.
Prakash is the founder and promotor of Educomp.
Educomp and Raffles Education had become part of a joint venture for establishing educational institutions in India in 2008.
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Raffles Education, through its statement, said that the allegations are “without basis and without merit”. The company has since obtained advice from its legal counsel in India.
According to their lawyers in India, the accused persons were named in the charge sheet due to the virtue of their designations in the company at the relevant time.
The company adds that it intends to “rigorously defend” its position.
Furthermore, it believes that the actions made by the court were likely to be instigated by Prakash, who continues to “repeatedly attempt to thwart and frustrate the Company's various ongoing law suits, in India and Singapore, to enforce its legal rights against Educomp/ Shantanu Prakash, including the enforcement of the Company's successful Singapore International Arbitration Tribunal (SIAC) arbitral award dated March 31, 2017, against certain entities of Educomp”.
In its previous announcement dated Oct 29, 2021, Raffles Education revealed that Prakash had numerous civil and criminal investigations in India which are pending against him. “He is also the subject of several look-out circulars issued by Indian agencies, which would entail the Indian authorities being informed when he enters or leaves Indian ports. Additionally, Shantanu Prakash is facing personal insolvency proceedings at the National Company Law Tribunal, Principal Bench, New Delhi”, reads the June 2 statement.
As at 9.01am, shares in Raffles Education are trading 0.1 cent lower or 1.64% down at 6 cents.
