He admitted copying 2,266 confidential files, then filed a police complaint against the Court Receiver
Justice Arif S. Doctor dismissed an ex-employee application to recall an ex parte order and imposed costs of 5 lakh rupees, holding that a grievance about the execution of a commission belongs in court, not in a police station.
An ex-employee of Avanse Financial Services admitted copying his employer's confidential files, refunded his joining bonus, and promised to cooperate with the internal investigation. Then the Court Receiver and a forensic agency arrived at his door under an ex parte order to mirror his devices. Before either of them had filed a report, he went to the police — and complained about the officers of the Court, the agency executing its order, and an advocate. Justice Arif S. Doctor has dismissed his application and ordered him to pay ₹5,00,000 to two armed forces welfare funds.
What the suit is about
Avanse Financial Services filed Suit No. 246 of 2026 against a former employee over the breach of its confidential and proprietary information. The plaint alleges that during his employment he transferred and downloaded that information illegally and without authorisation.
He did not dispute it. He admitted the breaches and refunded ₹10,36,271 to the company — his joining bonus and short-term incentive pay, as the termination letter of 22 April 2026 had demanded. He also assured the company he would cooperate with its internal investigation, and then went back on that assurance.
The investigation went ahead without him. It found that he had copied 2,646 files, of which 2,266 were the company's confidential information.
Faced with what it described as an imminent threat of further dissemination, the company sought interlocutory relief, and on 6 May 2026 the Court granted an ex parte ad interim order. It appointed the Court Receiver and a forensic expert, AKS IT Services, to mirror all of the defendant's devices and carry out a forensic analysis.
The narrow door the application had to pass through
The interim application asked for the suit to be dismissed and for the ex parte order of 6 May to be set aside, along with a range of other reliefs. Because one of its prayers sought to set aside or recall that order, the Court treated it for what it was: an application under Order XXXIX Rule 4 of the Code of Civil Procedure.
That provision is narrower than it is often assumed to be. On a plain reading of its proviso, an application under it must be premised on a false or misleading statement knowingly made by the party who obtained the injunction. The statement has to relate to a material particular, and it has to have been made either in the application for the temporary injunction or in an affidavit supporting that application. Justice Doctor noted that the Bombay High Court had already marked out the very limited ambit of such an application in Shemaroo Entertainment, Marico and Laser Shaving (India).
Nothing of that kind was established here, and the application failed at that threshold.
Two arguments were made to widen that door, and both were turned back. The ex parte order of 6 May had itself, in its paragraph 21, given the defendant liberty to seek a variation, modification or recall. That liberty, the Court held, cannot be read as enlarging the scope of Order XXXIX Rule 4, and does not let a defendant assail the order on its merits under the guise of an interim application, urging grounds that could and should have been taken in an appeal.
The second was built on the Supreme Court's decision in A. Venkatasubbiah Naidu, from which the defendant argued that a party under Order XXXIX Rule 4 may urge every ground otherwise available in an appeal. Justice Doctor turned that on its head twice over. Relying on the decision at all concedes that the application is one under Order XXXIX Rule 4, so the defendant could not then argue it was something else — what matters is the substance of an application, not its nomenclature or the provisions it cites. And the decision does not say what it was cited for. What the Supreme Court held is that the existence of a remedy under Order XXXIX Rule 4 does not take away an aggrieved party's statutory right of appeal. It did not conflate the two, and it did not hold that every appellate ground can be run under Rule 4.
Was any of it already public?
The defendant's substantive answer was that the company had suppressed material facts, and that the information in his possession was in the public domain anyway — derivable from the company's Red Herring Prospectus and an AON report.
The Court rejected the suppression allegation outright, and then set the two documents against the forensic findings. The prospectus and the AON report disclose the remuneration of a limited number of senior key managerial personnel for a particular year. The forensic report of 20 June 2026 records consolidated salary and payroll registers for every employee across four financial years, along with nomination and remuneration committee minutes and business strategy material. It records individual-level detail: payroll costing, an exercise labelled HR cost optimisation, performance management files, and chief-executive compensation benchmarking, with individual employees specifically identified.
The same gap appears on share options. The prospectus identifies the company's employee stock option schemes. The forensic report records individual-level allocation, vesting and cancellation data, together with committee minutes and decks, the internal methodology adopted for share valuation, financial forecasts, business blueprints, regulatory trackers and compliance status. None of that, the Court held, is contained in or capable of being derived from the prospectus, and nothing suggested it was publicly available.
The defendant also said he could not have downloaded or accessed the files, since they could only ever have been on the company's own devices. The forensic report contradicted that too, demonstrating prima facie that the information had been accessed or transferred as alleged. On that footing his reliance on Morgan Stanley, Krishnaswamy Chetty, Chinna Narayanan and Avanika Films was held misplaced, the facts and the nature of the confidential information in each being materially different.
The settlement that was not one
A second line was that the company could not sue at all, because the parties had reached a full and final settlement when the ₹10,36,271 was paid.
Paragraph 21 of the termination notice of 22 April 2026 answered it. On a plain reading, the payment did not constitute a full and final settlement, because the company had specifically reserved all its rights, including the right to seek damages. The decisions in Boghara Polyfab and ONGC Mangalore, on which the defendant relied, were held inapplicable — and in any event both concerned a final adjudication of rights on merits, not an application under Order XXXIX Rule 4.
The defendant also disputed the ₹15 crore claimed in one of the prayers in the company's own application.
The police complaint
What the judgment calls deeply disturbing is what the defendant did after the ex parte order was executed.
Immediately on completion of the commission, and before either the forensic auditor or the Court Receiver had submitted any report, he filed a police complaint against the officers of the Court, against the agency appointed to execute the Court's order, and against a lady advocate. He expressed not the slightest regret for having done so. On the nature of the complaint itself, the Court found it plainly vexatious and in substance a counterblast.
Justice Doctor made the point that if the defendant had a grievance about how the commission was executed, the Court was where he should have taken it first. He did not, and chose instead what the judgment calls a path of vengeance. Conduct of that kind does not merely erode the sanctity of the judicial process; it is a direct affront to the Court, because its officers are, in the phrase from Hindustan Unilever, the “eyes and ears, and the extended arm of the Court”.
On costs the Court took Dnyandeo Sabaji Naik as directly applicable. That decision holds that dealing firmly with those who abuse the process of the court is not a matter of discretion but a duty. An order of costs therefore had to follow, and would also serve as a deterrent to other litigants who might be misguided, or emboldened, by this defendant's conduct.
Order
Interim Application No. 3821 of 2026 was dismissed. The defendant must pay costs of ₹2,50,000 each to the Army Central Welfare Fund and to the Armed Forces Battle Casualties Welfare Fund, the judgment setting out the bank details of both, within eight weeks. If the costs are not paid within that period, interest at 8 per cent will apply.
The suit itself, and the company's own interim application, remain pending. Mr Hiren Kamod appeared for the plaintiff with Mr Lalit Munshi and Mr Rajat Abhale; Mr Harish Pandya for the defendant with Mr Darshan Bafna and Ms Sharmeen Lambay, instructed by Bafna Law Associates. The Court Receiver and an officer on special duty from his office were both present.