New Delhi: Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi has claimed in a Delhi court that the trustees of a charitable trust have “suddenly” and “aggressively” started pursuing a 1997 suit against him relating to alleged misappropriation of funds after he was awarded the prestigious prize. Child rights activist Satyarthi, who got the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, said the allegations against him and his wife Sumedha were malafide and the civil suit alleging embezzlement of huge funds should be dismissed with cost.
“The applicants defendants (Satyarthi and Sumedha) submit that the suit filed by the plaintiffs is malafide and is an abuse of the process of law. The plaintiffs who had filed the present suit way back in the year 1997 have suddenly started aggressively prosecuting the proceedings after defendant number 1 has been awarded Nobel Peace Prize,” the plea filed before Additional District Judge Kamini Lau said.
The plea was submitted in the pending suit, filed against the couple by Mukti Pratisthan Trust and four trustees alleging that the plaintiffs had got to know about embezzlement of huge sums of money belonging to the trust by maintaining false accounts.
Satyarthi and his wife are also trustees of the trust. In his plea, Satyarthi has urged the court to direct the plaintiffs to furnish security for the costs incurred or likely to be incurred by the defendants to defend themselves. “In case any cost of proceedings are awarded, it will not be possible for defendants to recover the same from plaintiffs as they do not possess any sufficient movable property within India from they can realise the costs.
“The plaintiffs do not own any assets from which the defendants may be able to realise the cost of proceedings,” Satyarthi’s application said, alleging that the plaintiffs had misappropriated trust properties for their own benefit.
The plaintiffs had earlier submitted to the court that they cannot bear even half the cost of chartered accountant to be appointed by it to look into the accounts of trust.
The plaint had alleged when plaintiff Sheo Taj Singh, also a leader of the Bandhua Mukti Morcha, conducted an inquiry into the affairs and accounts of trust, he came to know that “major part of the trust funds, running into huge sums of money has been spent by the defendant trustees (Satyarthi and his wife) either on foreign trips and other luxuries or embezzled by way of falsification of accounts”.
Satyarthi and his wife had earlier filed a statement challenging the maintainability of suit and had also denied the allegations made in it. He and Sumedha had alleged that the plaint filed against them was a proxy litigation which the plaintiffs had filed in “collusion with their mentor Swami Agnivesh, a political figure and Arya Samaj leader, who was putting pressure to grab the movable and immovable properties of the trust”.
The court was earlier apprised about the missing records by the receiver who was appointed to look into various key aspects of the dispute and file a report on it. Receiver Rana Parveen Siddiqui had told the court that some important records of the trust were missing, due to which she was facing difficulty in preparing her report.
The receiver had said the records in her possession were till 1987 while those after that year, could not be found at the earlier office of the trust in Delhi.
