Sonia Dhawan, accused in Paytm case, rejoins company

NEW DELHI: Sonia Dhawan, the former Paytm executive, who was also one of the prime accused in an extortion bid against the Soft-Bank-backed company’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma, is believed to have rejoined the company in a surprising turn of events.

Sources within the company told ET that Dhawan, who had spent nearly five months in jail, along with her husband Rupak Jain, had rejoined the company earlier in the week. The former VP of communications and public relations at the company had been granted bail by the Allahabad High Court earlier this month.

Messages sent to Sharma did not elicit any response till the time of going to press. Jain had been granted bail in February this year, also by the Allahabad High Court. It is unclear whether Dhawan has rejoined Paytm with the same responsibilities she had prior to her arrest.

ET was not able to confirm if and when Sharma had withdrawn his complaint against Dhawan and the other accused. Soon after the news of Dhawan’s arrest had broken, Sharma had told ET that he believed the executive, who had spent an estimated eight years with Paytm, was a “conduit of someone else’s bigger plan”.

“I don’t know how many more people were involved in this sad conspiracy. I am shocked and surprised at things that happened and some claims or theories being pitched. I am sure with support of police and everyone involved we will uncover the details soon,” Sharma had said at the time.

The development comes even as the company is in the midst of raising $1-2 billion from existing investors SoftBank and Alibaba’s financial affiliate Alipay, a transaction that could value the Noida headquartered venture at $16-18 billion.

Dhawan, in her plea before the high court, “claimed innocence and laid stress on fact that there is nothing concrete emerging against her and it cannot be said that the applicant ever indulged in any illegal activity secretly obtaining any data from the laptop of any device of the informant or his company and she never blackmailed as such”.

In its order, the High Court had noted: “There is no active role assigned to the applicant. Suppositional charges have been levelled, which allegations cannot stand concrete. The applicant being lady may be given advantage of provisions contained under Section-437 of the CrPC”.

Dhawan was arrested on October 22, after Paytm senior vicepresident and the company founder’s brother Ajay Shekhar Sharma, lodged an FIR saying she, along with her husband Rupak Jain, another Paytm employee, and a person named Rohit Chomwal had stolen private data of Sharma and tried to extort Rs 10 crore from him.