Amazon has approached the Supreme Court against a Delhi High Court order which stayed a single judge’s order restraining Future Retail Ltd from going ahead with its deal with Reliance Retail, says the Future Group.
“The company’s advocates are in receipt of communication dated April 13, 2021 from advocates of Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC informing that Amazon has filed a Special Leave Petition before the Supreme Court of India against the captioned order dated March 22, 2021 passed by the Division Bench of the High Court of Delhi,” Future Retail informed the stock exchanges. Future Retail said it will defend the matter/proceedings through its legal counsels.
The Delhi High Court, on March 22, stayed a single judge’s order restraining Future Retail Ltd from going ahead with the deal with Reliance Retail to sell its business, which was objected by the US-based e-commerce giant Amazon. A division bench of Chief Justice DN Patel and Justice Jasmeet Singh also issued notice to Amazon on Future Group’s appeal challenging the single judge’s March 18 judgement on the deal by which all the objections raised by them were rejected.
It also stayed the single judge order to attach assets of Future Group’s Kishore Biyani and others directing them to appear in the court on April 28. The bench stayed the single judge’s direction imposing a cost of Rs 20 lakh on the Future Group as well as its directors, asking them to deposit it in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund within two weeks for being used for providing COVID-19 vaccination to senior citizens of Below Poverty Line (BPL) category of Delhi.
The single judge’s order had come on Amazon’s plea seeking direction to order enforcement of the award by Singapore’s Emergency Arbitrator’s (EA) on October 25, 2020, restraining Future Retail from going ahead with its Rs 24,713 crore deal with Reliance Retail.
Future Group and Amazon have been locked in a battle after the US-based company took FRL into the emergency arbitration over alleged breach of a contract between them.
