Why Cannot DHFL FD and NCD Holders Approach the International Forum, OHCHR?

When Financial Injustice Masquerades as Law: The Piramal–DHFL Case and India’s Constitutional Abdication

Published on 10/10.2025 (GMT 21.47)

ABSTRACT

This article examines the legal and moral impasse faced by Fixed Deposit (FD) and Non-Convertible Debenture (NCD) holders of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (DHFL) in seeking justice through international mechanisms such as the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). It argues that under Article 5(2)(b) of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and Rule 96(b) of the OHCHR’s procedural framework, individuals may only appeal to the OHCHR once all domestic remedies have been exhausted. However, in the DHFL–Piramal case, where India’s Supreme Court upheld Ajay Piramal’s contentious resolution plan despite ongoing review petitions, this exhaustion clause becomes a site of moral contradiction. The article situates the DHFL takeover within a broader architecture of crony oligarchy, judicial abdication, and financial human rights violations, where legality becomes the instrument of dispossession or expropriation. Drawing upon the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), it reframes financial exploitation as a form of systemic human rights abuse. Ultimately, it concludes that while procedural routes to international justice remain closed, mass civil disobedience and collective non-compliance emerge as the only viable pathways toward moral and political redress.

1. Introduction: A Human Rights Violation Masquerading as Financial Resolution

The collapse of Dewan Housing Finance Corporation Ltd. (DHFL) is not merely a story of financial insolvency — it is a modern parable of how democracy can be hollowed out through the (il)legal grammar of capital. What began as a corporate resolution under India’s Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC, 2016) has transformed into a systemic dispossession of thousands of Fixed Deposit (FD) and Non-Convertible Debenture (NCD) holders — mostly pensioners, widows, and small investors — through a process sanctified by judicial authority and political complicity.

The Supreme Court of India, led by Justice Bela M. Trivedi’s⤡ ⤡ bench, on April 1, 2025, upheld Ajay Piramal’s resolution plan, thereby reversing the earlier and more equitable order of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) dated January 27, 2022 that deemed the DHFL resolution process and plan to be fraught with illegalities, irregularities and void aspects.

With the Supreme Court verdict, however, the judiciary effectively legitimized the corporate annexation of DHFL — executed by the Piramal Group, whose political proximity to the ruling establishment has been well documented, including donations through electoral bonds⤡ and contributions to PM CARES⤡, as well as alleged involvement in the Flashnet scam⤡, which leads to reportedly/allegedly quid pro quo⤡ concerns in the DHFL transaction as a return gift to Mr. Piramal by the BJP.

Despite ongoing review petitions against this verdict, the Piramal Group has already erased the identity of DHFL, converting it sequentially into Piramal Housing Finance Ltd. and then Piramal Finance — a reportedly/allegedly symbolic act of corporate erasure under the aegis of what can only be termed a crony oligarchic regime.

2. Why the DHFL Victims Cannot Approach the UN OHCHR To Seek Justice (Yet)

Overview

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) serves as the principal UN body for promoting and protecting human rights globally and provides secretariat support to various UN human rights treaty bodies. However, individuals cannot automatically bring complaints to UN human rights treaty bodies—they must first exhaust available domestic remedies in their own countries.

2.1. Legal Framework

Primary Legal Basis

Article 5(2)(b) of the Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) establishes the core requirement:

“The Committee shall not consider any communication unless it has ascertained that the individual has exhausted all available domestic remedies.”

Procedural Implementation

Rule 96(b) of the Human Rights Committee’s Rules of Procedure under the Optional Protocol reinforces this principle:

“The Committee shall not consider any communication from an individual unless it has ascertained that all available domestic remedies have been exhausted.”

2.2. Practical Requirements

What Must Be Exhausted

1. Judicial remedies – Appeals through all levels of domestic courts, up to the highest court
2. Administrative remedies – Available administrative review processes
3. Effective extraordinary remedies – Constitutional petitions or other special procedures that offer realistic prospects of relief

Standard Exceptions

The exhaustion requirement does not apply when:

1. Unreasonable delay – Domestic remedies are subject to unreasonable prolongation
2. Ineffectiveness – Remedies are unlikely to bring effective relief
3. Unavailability – No effective remedies exist in practice
4. Purely discretionary – Remedies depend entirely on discretionary decisions without realistic prospects

Key Clarifications

Who Decides Individual Cases

• UN Human Rights Committee (HRC) – Adjudicates individual communications under the ICCPR Optional Protocol
• OHCHR – Provides administrative and secretariat support; does not itself decide individual cases

Scope of Application

This exhaustion principle applies to:

• Individual communications to UN human rights treaty bodies
• Complaints under various UN human rights treaties with individual petition procedures
• Both individual and collective petitions where applicable

Bottom Line

Before approaching any UN human rights treaty body, individuals must demonstrate they have pursued all available, effective domestic remedies in their home country. This includes judicial appeals, administrative reviews, and any other effective legal procedures that could potentially provide relief for their human rights concerns.

The Ongoing Obstacles Keeping DHFL Victims from the OHCHR

• Because the domestic processes arising from the DHFL insolvency and related litigation (e.g., proceedings before insolvency tribunals, appellate bodies, and constitutional courts) must first be exhausted or shown to be ineffective or unreasonably delayed; until then, a communication would be inadmissible for non-exhaustion under Article 5(2)(b) and Rule 96(b).

3. The Paradox of Exhaustion: When the Domestic Remedy Itself Is the Illness

While the procedural clause of exhaustion exists to ensure respect for state sovereignty, in the DHFL case, it becomes a Kafkaesque trap. The same judicial and regulatory structures that enabled the injustice are being invoked as the precondition for seeking international redress.

• The NCLT and NCLAT—both quasi-judicial bodies—often operate under administrative pressure and with limited financial expertise, yet they are tasked with adjudicating cases that carry significant political and economic ramifications. Notably, in its verdict dated 19 May 2021, the NCLT directed the Committee of Creditors (CoC) of DHFL to reconsider the Wadhawan Brothers’ full repayment settlement proposal, effectively going against the handover of DHFL to Mr. Piramal. However, this directive was reportedly disregarded by both Mr. Piramal and the CoC, who managed to suppress the NCLT’s order through a swiftly obtained stay from the NCLAT within just five to six days. Interestingly, when the NCLT later approved Mr. Piramal’s resolution plan on 7 June 2021, he welcomed the decision without hesitation. Thus, when a quasi-judicial verdict challenges his corporate interests, Mr. Piramal emerges as a habitual seeker of stay orders; yet, when the same institution rules in his favour, he embraces it wholeheartedly. A striking paradox indeed.

• The Supreme Court’s endorsement of the Piramal resolution — despite evidence of undervaluation, suppression of forensic audit findings, and violation of creditor hierarchy — reflects a deeper abdication of constitutional morality.
• Victims’ appeals for review or curative petitions remain procedurally alive, yet substantively meaningless, given that the entity (DHFL) has already been absorbed and renamed by the acquirer.

Thus, even though domestic remedies have not yet been technically exhausted, the spirit of justice has been. The victims are being forced into a bureaucratic purgatory, where delay and dilution serve the interests of the oligarchs.

4. Financial Abuse as a Human Rights Issue

Under Article 17 (Right to Property) and Article 26 (Equality Before Law) of the ICCPR, and Articles 7 and 8 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), the DHFL case can be construed as a violation of the right to equality, property, and protection from arbitrary deprivation.

The United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) further impose upon states the duty to protect individuals from corporate abuse, and upon corporations, the duty to respect human rights. When both fail — and judicial institutions endorse such failure — the victims are subjected to systemic financial violence tantamount to human rights violation.

Hence, while the procedural clause bars immediate recourse to OHCHR, the substantive grounds for human rights abuse are already firmly established.

5. Occupation Before Finality: The Crony Oligarchy’s Signature

Ajay Piramal’s occupation of DHFL before judicial finality epitomizes the normalization of plutocratic capture.
As documented in the article “Occupation Before Finality: BJP-Enabled Piramal-DHFL Takeover”⤡, the sequence of occupation, renaming, and asset absorption demonstrates how corporate privilege precedes judicial conclusion — a flagrant violation of natural justice.

This pattern — reinforced through political donations, tax privileges, and public relations cover — blurs the line between philanthropy and bribery, merger and erasure, resolution and occupation. This reveals conscious “cunning” capitalism at its best.

6. Non-violent Civil Disobedience as the ONLY Remedy

In such a scenario, mass civil disobedience and non-compliance become not acts of defiance, but acts of survival.
When the courts, regulators, and corporate actors collude to institutionalize loss, the moral legitimacy of the system collapses.
The DHFL victims — stripped of both capital and confidence — embody a deeper crisis: the financial disenfranchisement of the middle class under authoritarian capitalism.

7. From Legal Abdication to Moral Resurrection

The OHCHR clause serves as both a procedural barrier and a moral mirror. It reminds us that before the world listens, a nation must first fail its own people — completely and conclusively. The DHFL–Piramal episode is precisely such a failure.

While the victims may not yet approach the OHCHR formally, their collective suffering already constitutes an international concern — a textbook case of financial human rights abuse in a democracy sliding toward corporate totalitarianism.

8. Conclusion: Between Legal Captivity and Moral Resistance

We stand today at a disquieting crossroads: a corporate entity annexes a financial institution before the courts have declared it legitimate, while the very pillars of justice — domestic remedy and international redress — stand as gatekeepers rather than protectors.

The DHFL occupation before judicial finality is a paradox writ large. It inverts the sequence of lawful adjudication — turning occupation into the de facto verdict, and denuding the courts of their moral stake. The institution is swallowed whole, its name erased, while litigation lumbers on in procedural purgatory. This is legal violence masquerading as jurisprudence.

Meanwhile, the OHCHR’s procedural bar — the requirement to exhaust domestic remedies — becomes an instrument of silencing. When the domestic courts are complicit — or when the remedy is itself indistinguishable from the injury — this procedural doctrine ceases to be a gateway to justice and becomes instead a dead end. The victims, caught in this straitjacket, are told: “Wait. Appeal. Review. Pray the court opens its eyes.”

Yet, waiting is betrayal. Appeals that rehearse old errors; reviews that recycle the same power equations; curative petitions that echo in empty halls — these are the forms that entrap, not the routes that redeem. The spirit of remedy is dead even while the letter survives.

In this impasse, legal legitimacy collapses into moral bankruptcy. The victims, dispossessed not by accident but design, demand more than procedural repetition. They demand collective refusal of a system that privileges oligarchs over common investors, that converts courts into adjudicators of corporate takeover.

Therefore, the battle cannot be confined to courtrooms alone. It must be waged in the public square, in the court of conscience, in mass mobilisation, civil disobedience, and unrelenting moral pressure. The legitimacy of law is not its procedural purity, but its capacity to protect the weak — and here, it fails spectacularly.

Let DHFL’s victims rise not as passive appellants but as agents of disruption. Let the world see that occupation before finality is not just a corporate tactic — it is a structural assault on democracy, property, and dignity.

When both domestic remedy and international institution close their doors, the last refuge of justice is the people themselves. For the oppressed, silence is complicity; noncompliance is a demand for sovereignty; mass resistance is the only remedy that cannot be adjourned.

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Dedicated to Paramavaiṣṇava Sril Srila Ajay Piramal

বিধির বাঁধন কাটবে তুমি এমন শক্তিমান–

              তুমি কি   এমন শক্তিমান!

আমাদের   ভাঙাগড়া তোমার হাতে এমন অভিমান–

              তোমাদের   এমনি অভিমান ॥

     চিরদিন টানবে পিছে,   চিরদিন   রাখবে নীচে–

     এত বল   নাই রে তোমার,   সবে না সেই টান ॥

শাসনে   যতই ঘেরো   আছে বল   দুর্বলেরও,

     হও-না   যতই বড়ো   আছেন ভগবান।

          আমাদের   শক্তি মেরে   তোরাও   বাঁচবি নে রে,

              বোঝা তোর   ভারী হলেই ডুববে তরীখান।

You deem yourself mighty enough to break the bond of Fate—
Are you indeed so mighty?

Our making and unmaking lie within your grasp—
Ah, such pride! Such vain pride you bear!

Forever would you pull us backward,
Forever would you keep us low—
But such strength is not yours, no, not so!

Though you bind us round with the rule of your power,
Know—within the weak too dwells a strength unknown;
Be you never so great, there still abides God above.

By crushing our power, you shall not live either;
When your burden grows too heavy—
your own vessel shall sink beneath its weight.

References:

1. OHCHR, Rules of Procedure under the Optional Protocol to the ICCPR, Rule 96(b).
2. Optional Protocol to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, Article 5(2)(b).
3. United Nations, Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (2011).
4. “Occupation Before Finality: BJP-Enabled Piramal-DHFL Takeover,” Once in a Blue Moon, 2025.
5. “Piramal: The King of Demergers — Cat Marjara Is Out of the Bag,” Once in a Blue Moon, 2024.
6. “A White Paper on DHFL,” Once in a Blue Moon, 2021.
7. “Chronology of the DHFL Scam,” Once in a Blue Moon, 2022.