Anil ends Rs 10,000cr case against Mukesh

In the spirit of truce arrived at with his elder brother, Mr Anil Ambani on Tuesday dropped a Rs 10,000 crore defamation suit against Mr Mukesh Ambani in the Bombay High Court.

“Yes, we have withdrawn the suit claiming Rs 10,000 crore as damages,” an Anil spokesman said.

The defamation suit was filed by Mr Anil Ambani in September 2008 shortly after Mr Mukesh’s RIL put a spoke in his attempts to acquire South African telecom giant MTN that year.

RIL had sent a legal notice to MTN asserting its right of first refusal on stake in RCom, a move that forced the Anil Ambani group to drop plans for a merger with the South African mobile company.

Incidentally, the defamation suit was dropped within days of RCom deciding to offload 26 per cent stake in a strategic sale.

Anil had dragged his brother to court, alleging that Mukesh had defamed him in an interview to the New York Times (dated June 15, 2008) that was reproduced in two leading Indian newspapers.

The suit against the newspapers has also been withdrawn.

The Ambani brothers signed a truce agreement late last month, ending a bitter public and legal battle despite arriving at a family settlement to divide the Reliance empire in 2005.

As part of the truce, the Ambani brothers decided to scrap a non-compete pact between their groups, allowing each other to operate in areas hitherto inaccessible.