Sunjay Kapur, the heir to the global car parts group Sona Comstar, collapsed while playing polo. Photo / X
Sunjay Kapur, the heir to the global car parts group Sona Comstar, collapsed while playing polo. Photo / X
The sudden death of an Indian billionaire has triggered a bitter succession battle at one of Britain’s largest car companies.
Sunjay Kapur, 53, died from a heart attack on June 12 while playing polo in Surrey. He reportedly swallowed a bee.
Kapur was the heir to Sona Comstar, a £2.7billion ($6.1b) automotive component business founded by his father.
The tycoon had been a fixture of New Delhi’s elite social circuit and was reportedly a friend of the Prince of Wales.
He married three times – first to the designer Nandita Mahani and then the Bollywood star Karisma Kapoor before marrying the former model Priya Sachdev in 2017.
Following his death in June, Sona Comstar has been at the centre of a succession battle, centred on a power struggle between the late businessman’s mother, Rani Kapur, and the company’s board of directors.
Rani Kapur wrote to the board on July 24 alleging her son had died in “highly suspicious and unexplained circumstances”.
This came a month after the board unanimously appointed a new chairman on June 23.
Sunjay Kapur, the heir to the global car parts group Sona Comstar, collapsed while playing polo. Photo / X
Kapur accused company figures of exploiting the family’s mourning to “wrest control and usurp the family legacy”, and said she had been “forced to sign documents behind locked doors” while under emotional distress.
The letter, also sent to India’s market regulator, claimed she had lost access to her bank accounts and had not authorised any appointments to represent the Kapur family.
Kapur claimed that her husband – Sunjay Kapur’s father, who died in 2015 – had made her the sole beneficiary of his estate and also a majority shareholder of the Sona Group.
The company hit back in a regulatory filing. It said Rani Kapur had not been a shareholder since at least 2019, contradicting her claim to be majority owner of the Sona Group via her late husband’s will.
Rani Kapur, the businessman’s mother, alleged her son had died in ‘unexplained circumstances’. Photo / Shamita Gaikwad, X
Sona Comstar also appears to have Kapur’s widow, Sachdev, on its side.
The board moved to appoint Sachdev as a non-executive director, and approved the appointment at the company’s annual meeting on July 25, despite Kapur’s objections and request to delay the meeting.
Last week, Sachdev’s office shared the Surrey coroner’s report, confirming that her husband had died of natural causes.
It specified that he died from ventricular hypertrophy and ischaemic heart disease, and closed its investigation.
This came after Kapur wrote to the United Kingdom authorities for an investigation into the circumstances.
The dispute has also drawn in Kapur’s sister, Mandhira Kapur, who had been estranged from her brother for four years.
In an Instagram post, she shared a photo with her brother and mother, vowing to “protect what you would have wanted, and what Dad dreamed”.
Kapur claims there is a conspiracy at play with the aim of taking control of the business away from the founding Kapur family.
“It quite clearly reinforces what she’s been saying, that her entire legacy is being usurped and no one is willing to look into the cause of death,” the senior advocate Vaibhav Gaggar, who represents Rani Kapur, told the Telegraph.
“It may all be very well interlinked and she has quite unequivocally said there is a conspiracy behind her son’s death.”
The company’s 72% of shares are held by the public and 28% by its corporate promoter, Aureus Investments Private Limited.
About 90% of listed companies in India are family controlled, yet only 63% have a formal succession plan in place, according to a PwC survey.
Mukesh Ambani, Asia’s richest man, was once locked in a public power struggle with his younger brother over the Reliance empire after their father, Dhirubhai Ambani, died in 2002 without a will. Their mother, Kokilaben, eventually brokered peace.
