HC to hear Kochhar’s suit against ICICI Bank on retirement dues

Kochhar’s suit filed in January seeks specific performance commitments and contractual obligations promised to her after her early retirement in October 2018. Kochhar had claimed that the bank was required to pay her entitlements of around Rs 1,000 crore as per the current market value. She had alleged that the bank reneged on its contractual commitments and cannot terminate a person who had already retired.

On Thursday, Kochhar’s suit came up for hearing before Justice R I Chagla after another bench, on April 12, directed its registry to transfer the suit from commercial division of the court – governed by the Commercial Courts Act, 2015 – to its regular civil division, governed by the Civil Procedure Code.

The court will also hear an application filed by ICICI Bank seeking execution of claw-back agreement and recovery of benefits granted by the bank to Kochhar.

The Indian Express had reported on March 29, 2018 that Videocon Group promoter Venugopal Dhoot had provided crores to a firm he had set up with Chanda Kochhar’s spouse Deepak Kochhar and two relatives, six months after the group got Rs 3,250 crore as loan from ICICI Bank in 2012. In December 2017, the CBI registered a preliminary enquiry into the sanctioning of the loan.

In December 2020, the Supreme Court declined to interfere with a Bombay HC order upholding the January 2019 decision of the ICICI Bank to terminate Kochhar’s services as managing director and CEO. In January 2019, the board of ICICI Bank sacked Kochhar and decided to claw back all bonuses given to her since 2009 when she took charge of the top post.