An FIR has been filed in Lucknow, among others, against Gauri Khan in her position as the brand ambassador for Tulsiani Builders.
The report filed at the Sushant Golf City police station is under Section 409 of the Indian Penal Code. The Section reads, “Whoever being in any manner entrusted with property, or with any dominion over property in his capacity of a public servant or in the way of his business as a banker, merchant, factor, broker, attorney or agent, commits criminal breach of trust in respect of that property, shall be punished with imprisonment for life, or with imprisonment of either description for a term which may extend to ten years, and shall also be liable to fine.”
Sec 409 IPC talks about the act of criminal breach of committed by any public servant, or any person who was entrusted with a person’s property.
Filed by one Kirit Jaswant Shah, the report names Anil Kumar Tulsiani, the chief managing director of the company and Mahesh Tulsiani a director of the company. Gauri Khan- named as Shahrukh Khan’s wife is the third person named in the report.
The report says that Khan was appointed a brand ambassador of the company in 2015 and that she had promoted apartments with high-end facilities at Sushant Golf City. The complainant was so impressed with Khan’s promotion that he decided to buy the apartment at a price of Rs 86 lakhs. Possession of the apartment was to be given by October, 2016. As possession was not given within the stipulated time, the builders paid Rs 20 lakhs; Rs 70,000 and Rs 2 lakhs as compensation for the delay.
The builders also promised that they would return the whole money if possession was not given within six months. When the complainant approached them for the money, they kept stonewalling him- only for him to find out sometime later that the apartment had been allotted to someone else.
The complaint includes Gauri Khan’s name with the two builders in this criminal conspiracy.
In October 2022, Anil Kumar Tulsiani of the company had been arrested for taking money from people and yet not giving them possession of their apartments. The amount in question then was Rs 10 crores.
One of the biggest fiascos of celebrity endorsement of products happened in 2015, when brand ambassadors were sent notices for promoting Maggi- the instant noodles which fell foul of food standards.
