Mail News Service
Jamshedpur, Jan 11: The long-running insolvency battle over the ailing Incab Industries took a dramatic turn as the company’s workers have filed a detailed appeal before the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in New Delhi challenging the December 3 orders of the NCLT, Kolkata Bench, which approved Vedanta’s resolution plan.
The workers alleged that the approval was based on a completely illegal and fabricated Committee of Creditors (CoC) built on false and inflated claims running into more than Rs 4,000 crore, even though Incab’s total legally determined liability was only Rs 21.63 crore.
In their appeal, the workers have relied heavily on a binding order of the Delhi High Court dated January 6, 2016, which had conclusively fixed Incab’s total bank dues at Rs 21.63 crore.
They argue that this judicially settled figure was deliberately ignored by the former Resolution Professional (RP) Shashi Agrawal, who instead admitted claims of over Rs 2,009 crore filed by Kamla Mills, its group company Fasqua Investments, and Pegasus Asset Reconstruction.
This manipulation, the workers point out, was not merely alleged but already judicially determined.
NCLAT, in its order dated June 4, 2021, had removed Shashi Agrawal as Resolution Professional, declared his actions to be criminal misconduct, and held that the Committee of Creditors constituted by him—dominated by Kamla Mills and Pegasus—was illegal.
The tribunal also directed the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI) to investigate him.
Acting on that direction, IBBI permanently cancelled Agrawal’s registration on May 13, 2022, holding him unfit to ever act as a Resolution Professional again.
Despite these findings, the workers allege that the new Resolution Professional, Pankaj Tibrewal, not only revived the very same fraudulent claims of Kamla Mills, Fasqua and Pegasus but went a step further by introducing two new claimants—ICICI Bank and Tropical Ventures—on the basis of equally dubious assertions.
ICICI Bank, which had never filed any claim during Agrawal’s tenure, suddenly appeared with a claim of Rs 500 crore, while Tropical Ventures filed a staggering claim of Rs 1,990 crore.
Through this process, Tibrewal allegedly inflated Incab’s liabilities from Rs 21.63 crore to more than Rs 4,000 crore.
The appeal states that this was achieved through deliberate concealment and misrepresentation before the NCLT.
While Tibrewal told the tribunal that Kamla Mills and Fasqua had been removed from the CoC pursuant to NCLAT’s 2021 order, he did not disclose that ICICI Bank’s so-called claim was merely a re-packaging of Kamla Mills’ already-discredited demand arising from a 1998 loan which had long been settled.
Even more serious are the allegations surrounding Tropical Ventures.
The firm claimed to be an affiliate of Universal Leader, which had borrowed Rs 93 crore from three banks in 1998 to revive Incab and had repaid those loans by 2000–2001.
Workers argued that Tropical Ventures never explained how a repaid loan could magically transform into a Rs 1,990-crore liability.
In fact, an NCLT bench headed by Justice Bidisha Banerjee and Arvind Devanathan, in orders dated January 7 and 8, 2025, found parts of Tropical’s claim—particularly the alleged HSBC loan—to be fake and noted that multiple entities were simultaneously claiming the same ICICI exposure.
The bench had directed Tibrewal to verify claims strictly through sanctioned letters, mortgage documents, guarantees, utilization certificates and charge records, but he allegedly ignored these directions.
The workers further rely on a crucial letter written by the State Bank of India, acting as operating agency before BIFR, to the Board on October 24, 2014, which makes no reference whatsoever to any 1998 loans—directly contradicting the narrative put forward by Tropical Ventures.
Despite all this, the NCLT bench comprising Lalit Singh and Rekha Kantilal Shah approved Tropical’s Rs 1,990-crore claim and went on to approve Vedanta’s resolution plan on the basis of what the workers describe as a “legally dead and fraudulent” CoC—one that had already been declared illegal by NCLAT.
In a striking allegation, the workers have also claimed that Kamla Mills promoter Ramesh Gowani siphoned off nearly Rs 600 crore, while Shashi Agrawal and Pankaj Tibrewal together misappropriated about Rs 20 crore from Incab.
They argued that if these amounts are recovered, the company can be revived without the need for any external investor at all.
The appeal now before NCLAT seeks to set aside the NCLT’s December 3, 2025 orders, quash Vedanta’s resolution plan, and order a fresh, lawful determination of Incab’s true liabilities in accordance with binding orders of the Delhi High Court, the Supreme Court, and earlier NCLAT rulings.
For Incab workers, the case is no longer just about insolvency—it is about exposing what they call one of the most audacious financial frauds in India’s corporate rescue framework.
Senior advocate Nishant Akhilesh is fighting the case on behalf of the workers
