IANS/New Delhi

Nina Pillai: seeks more compensation
The widow of ‘Biscuit King’ Rajan Pillai has filed an appeal in the Delhi High Court seeking enhancement of compensation awarded to her for her husband’s custodial death in July 1995.
The court yesterday issued notices to the central and Delhi governments and Tihar Jail authorities after taking note of Nina Pillai’s plea for compensation of more than Rs1mn, the compensation awarded by a judge on May 13 this year.
Pillai’s lawyer C Aryama Sundaram told the court she was seeking more compensation for charitable purposes and not for personal use.
He said 16 years had lapsed since the death of Rajan Pillai in custody and a compensation of Rs1mn was inadequate. The money, he said, would be spent for the purpose of betterment of the girl child in Delhi as also that of Tihar inmates.
In her petition, Nina Pillai claimed her husband was a “sad victim of a potent admixture of brutality, torture, atrocity, insensitivity, recklessness and negligence” of the state.
Pillai, whose takeover of Britannia Industries earned him the title of ‘Biscuit King’, was arrested in New Delhi on July 3, 1995, for an alleged corporate offence in Singapore and died while in custody four days later.
A dispute with his principal partner, a group of investors led by F Ross Johnson, former president of R J R Nabisco Inc, led to the Singapore’s commercial affairs department launching prosecution against Pillai between March and August 1993.
On April 10, 1995, Pillai was convicted under the Penal Code of Singapore.
Before a court could hear arguments on the question of mitigation of sentence, Pillai left for India and the court then issued warrants for his arrest.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) was sent a copy of the warrant for tracing and detaining Pillai for extradition.
The CBI did not find Pillai at his Mumbai address. Meanwhile, Nina Pillai filed an application in a Mumbai court on April 15, 1995, seeking anticipatory bail to her husband.
The appeal was rejected and she then approached the Bombay High Court which also dismissed her plea.
On April 28, 1995, Pillai surrendered before a magistrate in Thiruvananthapuram. He also filed an application for bail and was granted interim bail until May 5, 1995.
Thereafter, the Kerala High Court took up the case and called for the records. A larger bench was constituted which quashed the bail order.
However, Pillai did not surrender and was arrested by the CBI from a hotel in New Delhi.
He was brought before a local court, which remanded him in custody. Pillai was then taken to the Tihar jail.
He was shifted to the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Hospital due to health problems, where he died.