Much before the fall of YES Bank, an asset manager who had been close to the NDA government, once told me, “Rana pakka andar jaayega. Aap dekhte jaaiye, sir (Rana Kapoor will be arrested for sure. You just wait and watch).” One of Rana Kapoor’s industrialist friends, who I interviewed during the course of the book, said that Rana knew he was going to be arrested by the ED right in January end.
“He tried adjusting his books by that time and settling the accounts,” the friend said. This probably explains his trip to London in the middle of January. And the asset manager wasn’t wrong, for Rana Kapoor was arrested on Saturday, 7 March 2020, two days after the fall of YES Bank.
Rana was a man who, till two years ago, thought of himself as invincible.
In 2017, at his eldest daughter’s wedding, Union Minister Piyush Goyal and his wife were at the reception, posing with the Kapoor family. Tata Sons chairman N Chandrasekaran, and Bollywood superstars Shahrukh Khan…