The Karnataka High Court, on Friday, issued an important directive concerning the ongoing insolvency proceedings against Think and Learn Private Limited, popularly known as BYJU'S. The court ordered the Resolution Professional (RP) currently managing the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process (CIRP) to preserve all emails and communications between stakeholders involved in the case.
This interim order was passed by Justice M. Nagaprasanna while hearing a petition filed by Byju Raveendra. The court stated:
The court, however, declined to entertain other prayers in the petition, including requests to freeze the CIRP proceedings and recover deleted data from the email ID "ip.byjus@outlook.com". These requests were linked to Crime No. 44 of 2025, which is currently pending before the High Grounds Police Station in Bengaluru.
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"Those proceedings which the petitioner has sought to challenge, i.e., minutes of the COC meeting or others, has to be challenged before NCLT or NCLAT. It is open to the petitioner to avail of that remedy. Therefore, all those prayers which challenge minutes of COC, stand rejected."
During the hearing, Advocate Shyam Mohan, appearing for the petitioner, brought to the court’s attention that the former Resolution Professional had made certain admissions before the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Board of India (IBBI). He also argued that the newly appointed RP (R5) should preserve specific emails that are vital to the investigation.
The counsel highlighted that during a Committee of Creditors (COC) meeting held on April 8, concerns were raised about the deletion of 2,392 emails. These emails were reportedly removed due to the rearrangement of folders, according to a statement made by the previous RP, Pankaj Srivastava. The petitioner emphasized the importance of these emails as primary evidence of communication between stakeholders, which could be crucial in the ongoing proceedings before the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT).
"The only prayer that can be granted at this juncture is directing R5 to preserve all the emails or conversation between all the stakeholders in the case at hand, which would be required for CIRP or for investigation as the case would be."
It was further argued that deleting such emails could hinder a fair and complete investigation. Therefore, the petitioner sought directions from the court to ensure these communications are preserved by the current RP.
Responding to these submissions, the Government Advocate informed the court that the investigation in Crime No. 44/2025—filed by Rajendra Vellapalath—has already been stayed by a coordinate bench on March 17, 2025, with respect to the accused in that matter. As a result, no further action has been taken by the state in this regard.
Senior Advocate Uday Holla, representing M/s Glas Trust Company LLC, a respondent in the case, confirmed that there was no objection to the preservation of emails by the current RP.
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“Therefore, only prayer which merits consideration at this juncture is preservation of mails without any further loss of data.”
The High Court thus passed an interim order directing the preservation of all relevant communication and scheduled the next hearing for April 21.
