DHFL Victims, Are We Still Ready to Fight for It?

Posted on 6th December, 2025 (GMT 07:25 hrs)

Remembering 6th December 1992 — a black day in the history of the Indian Republic, marked by the demolition of the Babri Masjid by Hindutva terrorists, followed by the apex judiciary’s outright refusal to acknowledge the site of vandalism.

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the DHFL collapse is not merely a corporate failure or legal dispute but a political event symptomatic of India’s deepening cronyist order, where executive power, judicial alignment, and corporate interests appear increasingly intertwined. Through comparative analysis of recent successful pressure-group interventions—such as the farmers’ movement and the pushback against Sanchar Saathi—the article highlights how public mobilization, not institutional goodwill, remains the only effective counterweight to state-corporate consolidation. It further examines the erosion of judicial independence, shrinking civil liberties, and declining democratic indicators reported by international watchdogs, situating the DHFL case within a broader crisis of accountability and participatory rights. The central thesis asserts that without organized mass resistance—legal, physical, and digital—victims of financial injustice remain fragmented, disempowered, and structurally silenced. Ultimately, the article calls on DHFL depositors to transform from isolated individuals into a collective civic force or pressure group, arguing that justice in contemporary India must be demanded, not awaited.

I. DHFL Victims: An Appeal

Dear DHFL Victims,

If you agree with the following statements, do not go through this article:

• “The DHFL scam and its aftermath are not political matters.”
• “Only court petitioners will get back their money stuck in the DHFL debacle.”
• “If you are not a court petitioner, we will kick you out of our group of DHFL victims.”
• “If you want to vent your political frustration as a keyboard warrior, you mustn’t remain in the group of DHFL victims.”

However, if you more-or-less agree with the following statement, you are welcome to go through this article:

The DHFL fiasco appears to be fundamentally political in its origins, unfolding, and consequences—stemming from the BJP regime’s crony-monopoly economic governance model, wherein select corporate actors are pre-emptively enriched through policy favouritism and institutional alignment. In this case, the process seems to have been steered to benefit a politically aligned tycoon such as Mr. Ajay Piramal, through a manipulation—or at minimum, strategic bending—of due process, spanning the CoC-controlled CIRP phase through to judicial oversight across the NCLT, NCLAT (though with noticeable exceptions to be discussed consequently), and ultimately the Supreme Court, since all the review petitions challenging the apex court’s justification of the financially abusive Piramal plan have now been dismissed. As a result, small depositors have endured an engineered form of financial harm: a manufactured abuse that has culminated in dispossession, disenfranchisement, and expropriation, leaving ordinary citizens bearing the burden of a corporate-state nexus shielded by legal formalism.

This takes us to the formal opening of our article.

II. Collapse of the Line Between the Political Executive and Judiciary

Factually speaking, the difference between political executive and judiciary in present-day India has increasingly collapsed under the current establishment. Numerous instances can be cited, e.g., the Ram Janmabhoomi verdict (9th November, 2019; Civil Appeal Nos 10866-10867 of 2010) was given by the apex court of India without any sign-ature. The main composer of the verdict, ridiculously enough, was reportedly instructed by the “divine deity”. The said “divinely ordained” verdict is given as follows:

JUD_2Download

Here are a few examples and outliers of the same:

Name / Entity	Context in the Article’s Argument	Significance of the Case / Report (What it Illustrates)
Father Stan Swamy	Arrested under the UAPA in the 2018 Bhima Koregaon case — accused of being Maoist sympathiser.	His death in custody (July 2021) — while reportedly sick and under trial — has become a powerful symbol of what many see as judicial insensitivity, misuse of anti-terror laws, and suppression of dissent. (Wikipedia)
Umar Khalid	Student activist charged under UAPA in connection with the 2020 Delhi riots “larger conspiracy” case.	As of 2025 — more than five years since arrest — he remains an undertrial, illustrating how stringent laws and court delays can result in prolonged incarceration without conviction, undermining fairness and civil liberties. (Wikipedia)
Sharjeel Imam	Another student activist accused under UAPA for alleged role in the 2020 Delhi riots.	His repeated bail denials and long detention despite contested evidence highlight concerns about use of anti-terror laws to stifle dissent and limit free speech in contentious political times. (Wikipedia)
Bilkis Bano	Survivor of the 2002 Gujarat riots/pogrom gang-rape; her case became a symbol of communal violence and justice for victims of such pogroms.	The 2022 decision by the Gujarat government to grant remission to her rapists sparked outrage; the subsequent 2024 reversal by the Supreme Court reveals political interference in justice processes and fragile protection for victims — undermining faith in rule of law. (Wikipedia)

…and so on, countless other instances since 2014 till today…

Freedom House and the V-Dem Institute are international watchdog organisations whose consecutive reports have further contextualised India’s ongoing democratic decline. In recent years, both institutions have classified India as an “electoral autocracy” (or “autocratiser”) and a “partly free” country. Their assessments cite diminishing media freedom, the erosion of civil liberties, and increasing signs of judicial compromise. These global evaluations lend credibility to the argument that India’s institutional decay is systemic rather than incidental.

See more details in the following:

In this situation, when Press Freedom (the fourth pillar of democracy) is dismantled, what will be the way out? What is still to be done? Owing to such saffronized state of the judiciary, can we retain our faith in the Indian judiciary? We are not even referring yet to the painfully predictable realities of the Indian judicial system — the decades-long delays, the staggering backlog of unresolved cases, and the structural inaccessibility of legal remedy for ordinary citizens. Justice in India is often not denied; it is postponed into irrelevance, delivered only after the urgency, context, memory, and victims have withered. Litigation, for many, is not a path to justice but a slow erosion of resources, dignity, and hope. The judiciary, while constitutionally revered as the protector of rights, has increasingly become a space accessible only to those with money, influence, or institutional backing; for everyone else, it is prohibitively expensive, procedural labyrinthine, and emotionally draining.

In such an environment, silence is not consent—it is exhaustion. Legal recourse becomes a privilege, not a right. Citizens learn, slowly and painfully, that truth without power has no procedural value. The system does not merely delay justice; it conditions its pursuit. And when justice itself becomes a luxury product, democracy becomes a theatre—performed, not lived.

It is no wonder that Gandhiji (a briefless barrister) wrote in his Hind Swaraj the following about lawyers:

“The lawyers, therefore, will, as a rule, advance quarrels instead of repressing them. Moreover, men take up that profession, not in order to help others out of their miseries, but to enrich themselves. It is one of the avenues of becoming wealthy… They are glad when men have disputes. Petty pleaders actually manufacture them. Their touts, like so many leeches, suck the blood of the poor people.”

LAGE RAHO MUNNA BHAI LAWYER SCENE VIEW HERE ⤡

III. Absence of a Pressure Group

In political theory, pressure groups (also called advocacy coalitions) function as organized bodies that attempt to influence public policy without seeking direct electoral power. They become most significant in democracies when formal institutional channels—parliamentary debate, judicial oversight, and regulatory checks—cease to act as spaces of accountability. In such situations, civil society mobilization becomes the last available corrective mechanism.

In recent Indian memory, two notable cases demonstrate how structured public pressure can force policy reversal or halt executive actions: the farmers’ movement (2020–2021) and the Sanchar Saathi surveillance controversy (2025).

1. The Farmers’ Movement (2020–2021): Pressure Group at National Scale

The farmers’ agitation against the three farm laws passed in September 2020 evolved into one of the largest sustained protests in independent India. What began as region-specific discontent—primarily Punjab and Haryana—expanded into a nationwide coalition supported by:

• agricultural unions
• transport networks
• farm labour organizations
• student groups
• sections of the intelligentsia
• and finally, international observers

This movement displayed three key features of an effective pressure group:

Strategic Element	Output
Organization and coordination	Samyukt Kisan Morcha acted as a unified platform preventing fragmentation.
Narrative framing	Protest shifted from “agricultural reform” to corporate capture, livelihood insecurity, and federal violation.
Persistent public presence	Occupation of highways, borders, and symbolic state boundaries kept pressure visible and continuous.

Despite being labelled anti-national, foreign-funded, and extremist by government-aligned media, the movement did not fracture. After over a year of sustained resistance, including the deaths of more than 700 protesters (as reported by civil society records), the government formally repealed the laws on November 19, 2021.

This repeal was not institutional self-correction—it was the result of organized civil resistance overriding an otherwise closed legislative pathway.
The farmers’ movement stands as a benchmark: pressure made the state reverse itself.

2. The Sanchar Saathi Digital Surveillance Controversy (2025): Pressure in the Tech-Regulatory Sphere

The Sanchar Saathi program, initially introduced as a telecom fraud and SIM verification system, expanded in 2025 through a proposed update enabling:

• real-time geolocation tagging
• automated identity linkage
• silent analytics integration with law enforcement databases

Civil liberties activists, technologists, policy scholars, and eventually the public raised concern that this amounted to centralized surveillance without transparent safeguards, resembling infrastructure analogous to mass monitoring architectures (like China’s grid policing model).

Unlike the farmers’ movement, this was not a street protest—it was a networked pressure group, amplified through:

• digital rights collectives
• privacy researchers
• independent media
• online citizen mobilization
• and critically — pushback from telecommunications companies wary of compliance, liabilities, and reputational damage

The result was swift: rollout was paused, and the government issued clarifications suggesting reassessment and possible redesign.

This moment demonstrated a new type of pressure group—technocratic civic resistance, enabled by expertise, public awareness, and corporate alignment—not mass mobilization.

IIIa. Counterpoint: DHFL and the Absence of Pressure

Unlike the above cases, the DHFL collapse—despite affecting lakhs of depositors—has not yielded a unified, powerful pressure group. Instead, the space is fragmented:

• victims scattered geographically (yet could be united virtually in the age of internet explosion!)
• lacking centralized representation, instead having factions
• facing legal complexity
• met with institutional opacity
• and burdened by crony impunity

Where the farmers’ movement forced policy reversal, and where the Sanchar Saathi case forced executive pause, the DHFL case demonstrates what happens when fragmentation prevents collective leverage:
the nexus between the executive, judiciary, and corporate actors proceeds unhindered.

This dynamic is often described through the term:

Crony Capitalism — an economic-political structure where access to state policy, regulation, resources, and legal decisions are disproportionately shaped by private actors aligned with political power rather than through transparent, accountable processes (e.g., the Economist’s Crony Capitalism Index placing India among high-risk nations⤡).

IV. Ways, Means and Mechanisms

Below are the 3 detailed ways/mechanisms/available means to enable DHFL FD and NCD holders in reclaiming their lifetime savings as well as dignity, arranged in a point-by-point manner:

(1) Judiciary

If one can afford to appeal in the lowest quasi-judicial body to the apex court, it will be too expensive and time-taking. Not all can afford this huge money over the course of years.

It is found that the apex court went against the guinea pigs of the lab-state IBC “litmus test” that was DHFL CIRP, viz., the FD and NCD holders, though lowest quasi-judicial body (NCLT on 19.05.2021: reconsideration of full repayment offers: ignored and stayed) and lower quasi-judicial body (NCLAT on 27.01.2022: DHFL CIRP and Piramal’s plan full of irregularities, illegalities etc.) twice favoured, directly or indirectly, the rights of the small depositors. However, these two verdicts were systematically overturned. This shows crony corporate influence on judiciary in contemporary India.

We had predicted that the Supreme Court bench led by Justice Bela Trivedi⤡ and SGI Tushar Mehta’s⤡ would come up with a verdict on the DHFL cases that would indeed go against the collective interest of the small depositors since both the judges have been associated with the BJP

(2) Physical Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Movement

For initiating such movement, one needs:

i) Crowd-funding and labourious grassroots coordination efforts.

ii) Innovative slogans, songs, posters, reels, video collages (to be shown/projected via the LED jumbo-screens), graffiti, placards etc.

In the last six years since 2019, no such noticeable initiative has been found.

(3) Web-Based, Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Movement

For initiating such virtual/online movement (note that social media is taken to be the fifth pillar of democracy):

i) Participants need to be tech-savvy. If not, they can take a short course on the art of online movements here:

https://www.coursera.org/learn/activism-social-movements

ii) Extensive yet flexible content-writing capacity by identifying the source(s) of DHFL victims’ misery and suffering. The content writer in question must be equipped with knowledge spreading across the realms of activism, academics, research, community advocacy, citizens’ literacy initiatives, trans-/inter-disciplinary fields of interest, holistic knowledge or ability to inter-connect or inter-associate various operating variables underlying any given social/economic/political/cultural phenomenon.

iii) Occupy the walls of internet (across social media platforms) to occupy the domains of crony business tycoons.

iv) Learn SEO tactics to viralize, making internet toolkits, hashtags, digital posters/postcards, presentations, banners, online petitions or signature campaigns, selfie campaigns, audio-visual testimonies of the victims, flooding emails of concerned authorities to choke up their respective email inbox so they are compelled to respond to the cries of the victims.

v) Learn from instances of global movements that have massively relied on internet options: Occupy Wall Street, Arab Spring, Occupy Egypt, Stop Adani Movement (Australia), Fridays for Future (FFF) movement (School Strike for Climate, Climate Strike), Black Lives Matter, Me Too movement, Hands Up Project’s remote theatre for/of/by Palestinian children and so on.

vi) Try to ensure fact-checking of your claims to avoid the pandemic of misinformation and disinformation (in one word, “fake news” by the Feku government of India) by the Godi Media, BJP IT Cell, Whatsapp university and so on. Use reliable non-Godi media secondary sources/reporting/public offerings to reflect critically and then raise your voice.

IVa. Corollaries

A) One can amalgamate these three ways discussed above simultaneously, i.e.:

• taking recourse to judiciary,
• doing physical sit-ins, demonstrations, leading hunger strikes, protest marches, on-ground mobilization etc.,
• along with parallel internet/virtual presence.

B) Amalgamate (2) and (3) if you have lost faith in the Indian judiciary’s efficacy and legitimacy between 2014–2025. This amalgamation could prove to be effective only if you have enough person-power to lead this parallel war, e.g., FFF’s #ClimateStrike has been successful in this regard multiple times. This appears to be one of the best alternatives.

C) Just rely on (1) and forego (2) and (3). There is very shallow chance or hope of reaching your target, given the unfolding state of affairs under the BJP regime.

D) Just perform (3), i.e., virtual/online movement, since online presence is global. It has the ability to communicate and coordinate between various common issues, movements across the world, and therefore gain more strength. However, in India with digital divide and also due to wilful techno-phobia, this might not be enough at all times and circumstances.

IVb. Underlying Values Necessary for Any Movement in Contemporary India

Whatever options or option one might choose, there are certain common grounds that inform and instate the underlying goal of your social movement. They are given as follows:

a) Courage

The ability to openly question, stand against, and criticize unjust, unjustified, illegitimate, coercive, manipulative, corrupted operations of the state-corporate order. In India, the middle class mostly suffers from self-censorship and the fear of “getting caught”, this has to be counteracted since we have nothing to lose but our chains. Rulers, however despotic, money-monger and furious they might appear, are paper-tigers, i.e., their legitimacy falters once the balloon of opacity (non-transparency) and denial that surrounds them is popped by united strength and resilience.

b) Non-Apathetic Resistance

Connected to (a), this means one cannot let the self-censorship phenomenon to take effect in the form of inaction, and wilful ignorance of evidently visible, witnessable matters-at-hand. This apathy could be solved by taking roots in the examples of great leaders, changemakers, revolutionaries across our historical inheritance/lineage – be it Gandhiji, Bhagat Singh, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Jatindranath Mukhopadhyay a.k.a. Baghajatin, Jatin Das, M. N. Roy, B. R. Ambedkar, Jyotiba Phule, Savitribai Phule, Ram Mohan Roy, Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela and so on. Apathy could be overcome by empathy – empathy to all those suffering from injustice, oppression, tyranny across the world today. This means expansion of consciousness, which would also feed into (a), i.e., getting rid of fear.

c) Avoid Falling into the Traps of the RSS Ideology

Avoid the ideological patterns associated with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS)—not merely because the RSS is a non-registered organization, but because its worldview systematically replaces constitutional nationalism with ethnocentric, militant majoritarianism. Historically, unlike broad-based anti-colonial movements, the RSS did not at all participate in India’s freedom struggle; archival evidence and scholarship suggest that it often aligned itself with conservative, loyalist currents that sought to dilute or discourage mass mobilization against the British. Its framework, therefore, does not emerge from the ethos of democratic struggle, pluralism, or anti-imperial resistance, but from a counter-current that imagined the nation not as a civic, inclusive community, but as a cultural-religious hierarchy.

The RSS ideology rests on certain identifiable pillars:

• Ethno-nationalism: It defines Indian identity primarily through Hindu majoritarian cultural markers, marginalizing linguistic, regional, tribal, Dalit, and minority identities.
• Cultural homogenization: Diversity is framed as disorder; plurality becomes a threat rather than a strength.
• Mythicized history: It replaces historically grounded narratives with a civilizational fantasy of uninterrupted Hindu supremacy, creating an emotional rather than empirical basis for politics.
• Obedience over critique: Dissent, disagreement, or intellectual autonomy is viewed as subversion, weakening the collective imaginary of the “Nation.”
• Masculinist discipline: The ideal citizen is imagined as militant, obedient, and aggressive—mirroring paramilitary codes rather than democratic ethics.

What makes this ideology particularly insidious is that it often becomes internalized—not through explicit agreement, but through gradual normalization. It embeds itself in language (“national vs anti-national”), in suspicion narratives (minorities as perpetual outsiders), in policy framing (citizenship based on ancestry or faith), and even in emotional reactions (pride becomes conflated with conformity).

Internalization occurs when:

• Surveillance replaces solidarity (“Who are you loyal to?” instead of “What justice do you deserve?”)
• Fear replaces debate (self-censorship becomes a survival instinct)
• Duty replaces rights (citizenship becomes obedience rather than participation)

Once internalized, such ideology shifts the moral compass: authoritarianism becomes protection, exclusion becomes patriotism, and violence—symbolic or literal—becomes virtue.

To resist this ideological drift, one must actively anchor oneself in the constitutional imagination of India: plurality over purity, dialogue over dogma, equality over domination, and freedom over fear. Democracy is not only weakened by external coercion—it is corroded when citizens subconsciously adopt the grammar of exclusion and the psychology of submission.

In short: vigilance must begin within the self, because the most successful forms of authoritarianism are those that no longer need to enforce compliance—the citizen enforces it for them.

V. Conclusion: A Call to Unite

If DHFL victims do not unite, organize, articulate, resist, pressure, and mobilize—then nothing meaningful will change. History has never rewarded silence or obedience. Justice is never gifted; it is won. Rights are not handed over—they are demanded.

The question is no longer whether DHFL victims deserve justice.
The real question is:

Are we ready to fight for it—together?

Because unity is strength, and division is defeat.

संगच्छध्वं संवदध्वं सं वो मनांसि जानताम् ।
देवा भागं यथा पूर्वे सञ्जानाना उपासते ॥

Let us Walk together. Let us Speak together. Let our minds be united.
Just as the ancient gods, in unity, shared their sacred offering.

No single leader, no faction, no lone voice can move a mountain—but a united people can reshape the course of history. Our struggle is not about personal fame, not about power, not about hierarchy—it is about survival, dignity, and justice.

We are bound by the same wound, the same betrayal, the same fight. We rise not as scattered individuals, but as a collective force—with one demand, one goal, one truth:

We will not be erased.
We will not be silenced.
We will not be ignored.

As that old civil rights anthem reminds us:

We are in the same boat, brother.
We are in the same boat, sister.
If you tip one end—
you shake the whole ship.
It is the same boat, brother.

O Lord looked down from Your holy place
And saw this sea of human space—
One earth, one sky, one fragile future.
So He built a boat for a mixed-up crew—
With eyes of brown and black and blue.
The message is simple and eternal:

Divide, and we sink.
Unite, and we sail.

We are in the same boat, brother.
We are in the same boat, sister.
If one suffers, all feel it.
If one rises, all rise.

Today, we do not wait.
Today, we stand.
Hand in hand.
Voice with voice.
Step with step.

Not as victims—
but as a movement.

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