Hotels in Kashmir, Dubai businessman and Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul: The financial web

Introduction

(Editor’s Note: This story is the first in a series of articles which will explore judicial corruption and impropriety specifically in connection with Sahul Agarwal. The stories are based on whistleblower accounts and documents)

There are some secrets that are known but often unspoken. Not because those who know don’t want to speak about it, but because the price they may pay for breaking the omerta is too high, the consequences too serious. Corruption in the judiciary is one such subject. We often convince ourselves that judges are pristine, incorruptible, and virtuous because acknowledging corruption in the high judiciary essentially means that justice, that people so desperately seek, is often turned into a tradeable commodity by those sworn to righteousness. The truth, however, is often uncomfortable, no matter how much we may want to look away. 

If one works in Delhi, especially as a journalist, one hears several stories. One story you’re bound to hear after you make friends with some chatty folks who love to talk about their connections is how they meet, wine and dine in hotels, cut deals, and walk away with exactly what they want. These “professional” exchanges occur either for cash or kind. And these “deals” aren’t above board. In such circles, the law is often viewed as a highly elastic polymer.  

So, what exactly happens at the Hyatt? Who owns and funds this hotel? What deals are cut, who benefits from these deals and who loses? What do these deals, by those with immeasurable power, say about the state of our Judiciary? Has Justice become a commodity, sold to the highest bidder (or those with files containing dirty little secrets)? Have the Justices been compromised? 

We may not have many answers – yet. But when Hyatt and the entity which owns it are investigated, we do get a glimpse into the underbelly of the justice marketplace.  

This is the story about Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul. The same Sanjay Kishan Kaul, who has recently become concerned about the independence of the judiciary and judicial propriety, has connections that raise serious questions not only about his independence, but about his integrity itself. 

The story concerns his properties in Srinagar, the hotels he allegedly owns, who seems to have paid to have those properties constructed, his daughter and son-in-law, and a shady businessman deeply linked to his family. This story concerns an investigation into the said businessman allegedly routing money to construct hotels owned by the Kaul family. 

Executive Summary

While Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul sat on the Supreme Court of India, his house in Srinagar was being rebuilt as a hotel. His son-in-law’s company now runs it. And the money, the builder and the architect that seems to be behind that hotel venture lead back to one man: Sahul Agarwal, a Dubai-based businessman with almost no public footprint, whom our sources describe as a man with close ties to the judiciary. His wife now controls the Hyatt Regency Delhi, but has exerted significant power in Asian Hotels North Ltd (AHNL). since at least 2020, owing to family ties to the promoters and one Director. 

Every outside lender to Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s son-in-law’s company is tied to Sahul Agarwal’s family. So is the company that paid its alleged builder, and so is the client named on its architect’s contracts that OpIndia has accessed through a whistleblower. 

Throughout, Justice Kaul’s daughter was in court for the Hyatt’s owner, in nearly 300 court orders from 2021. That includes Supreme Court hearings – all of this while her father was a Supreme Court judge himself. After he retired, she appeared for Sahul Agarwal’s mother.

While his daughter represented AHNL (a company that now owns Hyatt and Sahul has been significantly influenced since 2020), Justice Kaul, still a Supreme Court judge, was photographed in Kashmir in 2022 with Sahul Agarwal.

The year 2022 becomes important. Several transactions, contract notes and threads originate in this year – right around the time Justice Kaul was pictured with Sahul Agarwal in Kashmir. 

As a Supreme Court judge, Justice Kaul never disclosed his assets. He has not explained any of this.

1. The judge’s house became his son-in-law’s hotel

• Pratap Villa, in Rajbagh, Srinagar, was registered with Kashmir’s tourism department as a guest house “in the name of Mr. Kanwar Sanjay Kishan Kaul & others”. That is by his own public notice. The registration ran until March 2018, after he joined the Supreme Court in February 2017.
• Photographs obtained from whistleblowers show the villa being rebuilt in 2022. Justice Kaul was then a sitting Supreme Court judge, and from November 2022 was the court’s second most senior.
• Kaul Hotels Pvt Ltd was incorporated in 2023, his last year on the bench. His son-in-law, Adit Khorana, owns 99.99% of it. The one remaining share belongs to Bilal Ahmed Sofi, a man with no public trace. The company’s registered office is Pratap Villa.
• Days after retiring in December 2023, Justice Kaul told ETV Bharat that he had gone back to Kashmir and redone his house for the hospitality sector.
• In October 2025, he applied to transfer the guest house’s title from “Sanjay Kishan Kaul & others” to “Kaul Hotels Pvt. Ltd. (The Pratap Villa)”.
• Kaul Hotels’ general manager says the company runs three luxury hotels: at Rajbagh, Nigeen Bagh and Tan Marg. Tan Marg is where Justice Kaul has ancestral land, which he went to court in 2007 to protect.

The asset is the judge’s own house. His son-in-law owns the company that profits from it. The company receives large sums of money from Sahul Agarwal fronts.

2. The man in the photograph

• OpIndia has a photograph of Justice Kaul with Sahul Agarwal. According to our sources, it was taken in Kashmir in 2022, the same year Pratap Villa was being rebuilt.
• Sahul Agarwal is reportedly a Grenadian citizen based in Dubai and has almost no trace online. In Delhi’s legal circles, we are told he is described as a wheeler-dealer with contacts in the judiciary.
• His wife, Shreya Agarwal, has been a shareholder in Asian Hotels (North) Ltd (AHNL), the Hyatt’s owner, since September 2020. That was while the Jatia group ran it. From September 2022 to March 2024, AHNL’s own filings listed her as the relative of one of its directors. The only director that fits is Akhilesh Bhuwalka. He joined the board in June 2020, the quarter before she appeared, and shares three family companies with Sanjay Bhuwalka, who our whistleblower says is her father. When he resigned in May 2024, AHNL stopped describing her as a director’s relative. A court filing in a matrimonial case also describes her as the cousin of Amritesh Jatia, AHNL’s former chairman.
• In March 2024, she bought 18.9% of AHNL from a Jatia company. In early 2026, AHNL issued ₹765 crore of new shares to her Singapore company, Elana Holdings, under a SEBI route for stressed companies that required no open offer. Together they now hold 64.35%. AHNL’s 2025-26 annual report says it has “no promoter”, and on the same page calls itself a subsidiary of Elana.

3. Sahul Agarwal’s circle financed the son-in-law’s company

Kaul Hotels’ audited accounts list unsecured loans from Adit Khorana himself and from three outside lenders. Each of the three leads back to Sahul Agarwal.

Lender	Loan to Kaul Hotels	Link to Sahul Agarwal
Evaan Holdings	₹66.52 lakh (31 March 2024)	90% owned by his parents; his wife is a shareholder. First directors: his mother and Sanjay Bhuwalka. Registered at an address inside the Hyatt Regency.
Angel Expanders	₹1.01 lakh (2024), ₹13 lakh (2025)	Run by Sumit Shyam Lulla, whom our whistleblower describe as Sahul’s frontman, and his mother-in-law. It later held 4.03% of the Hyatt’s.
Standard Capital Markets	₹1.50 crore (31 March 2025)	Its MD, Ram Gopal Jindal, sat on the board of Sahul’s company in 2016, when his family bought their shares from Sahul and his father. His son chaired Standard Capital until March 2026.

• The swap. In one year, the lenders changed. By March 2025, Evaan’s loan had vanished and Adit Khorana’s own loan had fallen from ₹60 lakh to ₹15 lakh. Standard Capital, absent the year before, now held ₹1.50 crore, about 84% of all unsecured debt. The accounts do not say whether Standard Capital’s money paid off Evaan and Khorana. The timing demands an explanation.
• The lender’s record. In October 2024, Standard Capital bought a ₹150 crore loan owed by Veer Chemicals. Days later, Veer defaulted for the first time. Sumit Shyam Lulla (Sahul Agarwal’s frontman) and his mother-in-law then joined Veer’s board, and Standard Capital pushed the company into insolvency. Separately, before the NCLAT, the Exclusive group alleges that in October 2023, AHNL’s loan rights were moved to Standard Capital without board approval, and that Sahul’s parents were behind it.

4. The Hyatt’s owner paid the alleged builder; Sahul’s father-in-law hired the supposed architect

• The builder. Kaul Hotels owes ₹49.69 lakh to BL Projects, a construction firm. BL Projects’ bank statements (acquired from the whistleblower) show it received ₹1.16 crore from AHNL, the Hyatt’s now owner, in ten payments between April 2022 and July 2023, while Justice Kaul was a Supreme Court judge. Angel Expanders paid it almost ₹4 lakh more. According to its own documents, AHNL has no hotel in Kashmir.
• The Agarwals were already inside. The Jatia group ran AHNL then, but Shreya Agarwal (wife of Sahul Agarwal) was already on its register, listed as a director’s relative. In October 2022, in the middle of those payments, Evaan Holdings was incorporated with Sahul’s mother and Sanjay Bhuwalka as its first directors, and its registered office inside the Hyatt Regency.
• The architect. OpIndia holds two contract notes from 2022 by Architecture Discipline, a Delhi firm, sourced from the whistleblower. One is for a 50-room, 90,000 sq ft hotel at Tan Marg (a ₹2 crore fee). The other is for an 18,000 sq ft villa with up to eight houseboats at Nigeen Bagh (₹1 crore, against a ₹15 crore build budget). Both name the client as “Mr. Sanjay Bhuwalka, M/s Sulojay Realty Pvt. Ltd.”
• Sulojay paid the architect. Sulojay’s own books show Architecture Discipline among its creditors, with ₹40.35 lakh paid. Until June 2022, Sulojay was owned by Bhuwalka and Sahul Agarwal’s parents, who lent it ₹28.30 crore and ₹32.46 crore. Sulojay lent ₹75 lakh to AHNL. After it was sold in June 2022, the NCLAT records that about ₹55.66 crore was paid out to members of the Agarwal family.
• The sites. OpIndia found no hotel run by Sulojay or Bhuwalka at Tan Marg or Nigeen Bagh as the contract note states. Kaul Hotels’ general manager lists three properties as the hotels he manages. He mentions Raj Bagh (Where Pratap Villa is), Tan Marg and Nigeen Bagh (both mentioned in the Architecture Discipline contract notes). 

The sites in the contract notes are exactly where the Kaul Hotel manager says the hotels are. We suspect the money came from Sahul Agarwal’s circle. 

5. His daughter, the Agarwals’ lawyer, on both sides of his retirement

• Aakanksha Kaul, Justice Kaul’s daughter, appears as counsel for AHNL in nearly 300 court orders from August 2021 onwards. They include Supreme Court hearings in 2022 and 2023 while her father sat on that court, though not on his benches. The Supreme Court’s record of 13 January 2023 lists both her and her husband, Adit Khorana (also the owner of Kaul Hotels), for AHNL.
• In September 2026, she appeared in the Supreme Court for Kanta Agarwal, Sahul Agarwal’s mother, on three dates. A member of that legal team also represented Sanjay Bhuwalka.
• For five years, from 2021 to 2026, the judge’s daughter has worked for the Hyatt’s now owner and the Agarwal family, while Sanjay Kishan Kaul was a Supreme Court judge and also, after his retirement.

Essentially, while Sanjay Kishan Kaul sat as a judge in India’s highest court, his daughter was representing a certain company as a lawyer in the same court, and it seems like that very company was building/financing high-value luxury hotels for the judge’s family.

6. Measured against the judges’ own code

In 1997, the Supreme Court adopted the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life, the code of conduct for India’s higher judiciary.

• Trade or business. Value 13 says a judge “should not engage directly or indirectly in trade or business”. Pratap Villa was a registered guest house in Justice Kaul’s name while he sat on the Supreme Court. It was rebuilt as a luxury hotel in 2022, while he was still a judge, for his son-in-law’s company to run.
• Gifts and hospitality. Value 10 says a judge “shall not accept gifts or hospitality”, beyond narrow exceptions for family and friends. If the rebuilding of the judge’s own house was paid for, directly or through his son-in-law’s company, by people tied to Sahul Agarwal, this rule is at the heart of the case.
• Family at the Bar. Value 4 keeps a judge’s family away from cases he hears. His daughter appeared before other benches, and OpIndia has found no breach on that count. But the code exists to keep a judge’s family and his court apart. Here, his daughter spent years representing a company the family of a man photographed with him had already entered.
• Assets. From 2009, Supreme Court judges were free to publish their asset declarations, and several did. Justice Kaul, who had publicly declared eight properties as a High Court judge in 2010, did not.

How it unfolded

When	What happened	Justice Kaul was
Before 2018	Pratap Villa is a registered guest house in his name	A Supreme Court judge (from Feb 2017)
Sep 2020	Shreya Agarwal enters AHNL’s share register	A Supreme Court judge
Aug 2021	His daughter starts appearing for AHNL	A Supreme Court judge
2022	Photographed with Sahul Agarwal (per sources); Pratap Villa rebuilt; architect hired for Tan marg and Nigeen Bagh by Sulojay; AHNL starts paying BL Projects	A Supreme Court judge
2023	Kaul Hotels incorporated; AHNL’s payments to BL Projects continue to July	A Supreme Court judge, until December
Dec 2023	Says he has redone his Kashmir house for hospitality	Retired
Mar 2024	Evaan, the Agarwal family company, has lent Kaul Hotels ₹66.52 lakh; Shreya buys 18.9% of AHNL	Retired
Mar 2025	Standard Capital holds ₹1.50 crore, 84% of Kaul Hotels’ unsecured debt	Retired
Oct 2025	He applies to move Pratap Villa to Kaul Hotels	Retired
2026	The Agarwals control the Hyatt; his daughter appears for Sahul’s mother	Retired

What the documents add up to

Put the documents side by side and one picture emerges.

While Justice Kaul was a Supreme Court judge, several things happened at once, especially in the year 2022. His house was being rebuilt as a hotel. The Hyatt’s owner, already home to Sahul Agarwal’s wife, was paying a builder that now counts Kaul Hotels among its clients. A company owned by Sahul’s father-in-law and parents was hiring an architect for hotels at sites his son-in-law’s company, the GM says, runs. And his daughter was in court for the Hyatt’s owner.

After he retired, companies tied to Sahul Agarwal financed his son-in-law’s company, and the judge moved his house into it or, the company was moved to his house.

The asset is the judge’s. The company, on paper, is his son-in-law’s. The lenders and the architect’s client trace back to Sahul Agarwal’s circle, and the alleged builder’s paymaster is the company his wife now controls.

That is the pattern of a sitting Supreme Court judge whose family’s private property became financially entangled, through his son-in-law, with a businessman, beginning while he was in office. Whether it was a favour, a payment or a business arrangement, and what, if anything, Sahul Agarwal received in return, are questions only Justice Kaul can answer. OpIndia has found no document showing money paid to him personally, or a judgment of his that favoured the Agarwals. It does not need one to demand answers. A judge of India’s highest court is expected to be above suspicion. On these documents, he is not.

Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. Justice Kaul has much to explain.

What Justice Kaul must answer

1. Pratap Villa. It stood in your name and your family’s, and was rebuilt in 2022 while you sat on the Supreme Court. Who paid for that work, and how much did it cost?
2. Sahul Agarwal. When and where were you photographed with him, and how often did you meet him while you were a judge? Were your family’s Kashmir properties ever discussed with him?
3. The loans. Did you know your son-in-law’s hotel company was being funded by Evaan Holdings, a company owned by Sahul Agarwal’s parents and registered inside the Hyatt Regency, and by Angel Expanders, run by a man described as his frontman?
4. The swap. Did Standard Capital’s ₹1.50 crore pay off Evaan’s loan and your son-in-law’s own? Who arranged the switch?
5. The builder. BL Projects, which Kaul Hotels owes ₹49.69 lakh, received ₹1.16 crore from AHNL while you sat on the court. AHNL has no property in Kashmir. Was any of that money spent on your family’s properties?
6. The architect. Why was Sahul Agarwal’s father-in-law, through Sulojay Realty, the client on architecture contracts for hotels at Tan marg and Nigeen Bagh, the very sites your son-in-law’s company now runs, and where you hold ancestral land? Are they the same hotels?
7. Disclosure. While your daughter appeared for AHNL in the Supreme Court, did you disclose your family’s ties to AHNL and the Agarwal family to the Chief Justice? Did you step aside from any matter involving them?
8. Assets. You declared your Kashmir properties publicly in 2010. Why did you never publish your assets as a Supreme Court judge, while one of those properties was being turned into a hotel? Did your confidential declaration to the Chief Justice mention it?
9. The transfer. On what terms, and at what valuation, is Pratap Villa being moved to Kaul Hotels? Is your family being paid for it by a company funded through Sahul Agarwal’s circle?
10. Bilal Ahmed Sofi. Who is he, and why does he hold the one share in Kaul Hotels that your son-in-law does not?
11. For Adit Khorana. If these loans were payment for legal work, why were they paid as unsecured loans to a hotel company rather than as fees to a lawyer?
12. Did you introduce any other judges to Sahul Agarwal? Were any judgments ever discussed with him?

Timeline

Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Sahul Agarwal and the money: 2022–2025

How the dates are marked

• No mark: the exact date is known.
• † Only the month is known. The date is set to the 1st of that month, unless a note says otherwise; the exact date is unknown.
• ‡ Only the year, or a financial year, is known. The date is set to 1 January of that year, unless a note says otherwise; the exact date is unknown.

2022

Date	Event	Note on the date
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Justice Kaul is photographed with Sahul Agarwal in Kashmir (per sources).	We know they met in 2022 but not the exact date, so the date is taken as 1 January 2022.
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Pratap Villa is under construction (photographs from local sources) while Kaul sits on the Supreme Court.	The photographs are dated only to 2022.
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Architecture Discipline’s contract notes: a 50-room hotel at Tan marg (₹2 crore) and a villa with houseboats at Nigeen Bagh (₹1 crore). Client: Sanjay Bhuwalka, Sulojay Realty.	The notes are dated only to 2022.
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Aakanksha Kaul appears for AHNL in Supreme Court hearings.	Hearings during 2022; individual dates not listed.
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Sulojay takes unsecured loans from Angel Expanders and Sahul Agarwal’s parents, and lends ₹75 lakh to AHNL.	2021–22
1 Jan 2022 ‡	Exclusive Capital lends AHNL ₹2.5 crore and ₹1.66 crore.	2021-22
14 Jan 2022	Exclusive Capital lends Sulojay ₹5 crore, while the Bhuwalka and Agarwal families still own it.
11 Apr 2022	AHNL makes the first of ten payments to BL Projects.
1 May 2022 †	Sanjay Bhuwalka’s loans to Sulojay end, totalling ₹7.47 crore since April 2021.	April 2021 to May 2022
2 Jun 2022	The Bhuwalka and Agarwal families sell all of Sulojay to Exclusive Motors (Satya Prakash Bagla). Bhuwalka resigns; Bagla and Achal Kumar Jindal take control.
4 Jun 2022	Exclusive Capital lends Sulojay another ₹12 crore.
30 Jun 2022 †	Sulojay pays about ₹55.66 crore to members of the Agarwal family towards their loans (NCLAT).	The NCLAT records only that this came after the June 2022 change of management. We have taken it as June 2022, but cannot be sure of the month. Set to 30 June, not 1 June, because the payout followed the 2 June sale.
30 Jun 2022	Shreya Agarwal’s AHNL stake rises to 2.08%. Exclusive Capital holds 3% of AHNL and Exclusive Motors 1.25%.	Quarter ending June 2022.
25 Aug 2022	Ram Gopal Jindal becomes Managing Director of Standard Capital Markets.
5 Sep 2022	Kanta and Suresh Agarwal buy 1,17,325 shares each in Exclusive Capital.
30 Sep 2022	Shreya’s stake reaches 2.98%. AHNL first lists her under “Directors and their relatives”.	Quarter ending September 2022.
26 Oct 2022	Evaan Holdings is incorporated. First directors: Sanjay Bhuwalka and Kanta Agarwal. Registered office inside the Hyatt Regency.
9 Nov 2022	Justice Kaul becomes the Supreme Court’s second most senior judge.
28 Dec 2022	Exclusive Capital takes over all of IndusInd Bank’s loans to AHNL, including a ₹100.58 crore term loan.
31 Dec 2022	AHNL’s governance filing lists six directors, including Akhilesh Bhuwalka, the only non-independent, non-executive director.	Quarter ending December 2022.

2023

Date	Event	Note on the date
1 Jan 2023 ‡	Aakanksha Kaul continues appearing for AHNL in the Supreme Court; Adit Khorana appears alongside her.	Hearings during 2023.
1 Jan 2023 ‡	Kaul Hotels Pvt Ltd is incorporated in Kashmir.
13 Jan 2023	A Supreme Court record lists Aakanksha Kaul and Adit Khorana together for AHNL.
31 Mar 2023	The Jatia promoter group holds 50.69% of AHNL.	End of FY 2022-23.
21 Jul 2023	AHNL makes its last payment in the April 2022 – July 2023 series to BL Projects, totalling ₹1,16,39,064.
1 Oct 2023 †	Allegation by the Exclusive group before the NCLAT: AHNL’s loan rights were assigned to Standard Capital without board approval.
25 Dec 2023	Justice Kaul retires from the Supreme Court.
29 Dec 2023	In an ETV Bharat interview, Kaul says he went back to Kashmir and redid his house for the hospitality sector.
31 Dec 2023 ‡	Evaan Holdings lends Kaul Hotels ₹66.52 lakh, unsecured.	The loan was made in FY 2023-24, but its exact date is unknown, so we have taken it as 31 December 2023. Justice Kaul retired on 25 December 2023. If the money came before that date, Kaul Hotels took it while he was a sitting Supreme Court judge; if after, within weeks or months of his retirement. Only the transaction date, which we do not have, can settle this.

2024

Date	Event	Note on the date
20 Mar 2024	Shreya buys 36,76,700 AHNL shares (18.90%), taking her stake from 2.98% to 21.88%. Suresh and Kanta Agarwala named as acting in concert. Yans sold 20.97% to Shreya and Manohar Tikamdas Ruprell.
31 Mar 2024	AHNL lists Shreya as a director’s relative for the last time.	Quarter ending March 2024.
31 Mar 2024	The Jatia promoters have diluted their entire stake (AHNL auditor’s report).	End of FY 2023-24.
31 Mar 2024	Kaul Hotels’ accounts: unsecured loans from Evaan (₹66.52 lakh), Adit Khorana (₹60 lakh) and Angel Expanders (₹1,01,120), about ₹1.27 crore in total. About ₹49.70 lakh payable to BL Projects.	Year-end balances; the dates of the loans themselves are not shown.
1 May 2024 †	Executive director Ashish Dhanuka leaves AHNL’s board.	May 2024
6 May 2024	Akhilesh Bhuwalka resigns from AHNL’s board.
30 Jun 2024	Shreya is listed as an NRI, no longer as a director’s relative. Angel Expanders holds 7,84,284 AHNL shares (4.03%).	Quarter ending June 2024.
1 Oct 2024 †	Standard Capital buys a ₹150 crore loan owed by Veer Chemicals. Days later, Veer defaults.	October 2024
1 Nov 2024 †	Sumit Shyam Lulla and Pushpa Dutta join Veer’s board; Standard Capital starts insolvency proceedings.

2025

Date	Event	Note on the date
1 Jan 2025 ‡	Kanta Agarwal is an AHNL shareholder.
1 Jan 2025 †	Angel Expanders pays BL Projects almost ₹4 lakh.	The article gives January 2025; the exact date is unknown.
31 Mar 2025	Kaul Hotels’ accounts: Standard Capital ₹1,50,03,510 (84.27% of ₹1,78,03,510 in unsecured loans). Evaan’s loan gone; Adit Khorana’s down to ₹15 lakh; Angel Expanders’ up to ₹13 lakh. The ₹49.70 lakh owed to BL Projects carried forward unchanged.	Year-end balances.
31 Mar 2025	Kaul Hotels’ auditor’s report: Adit Khorana 99.9999%, Bilal Ahmed Sofi one share. Directors: Smita Khorana and Sofi.
1 Jun 2025 †	Tripurari Singh becomes Kaul Hotels’ general manager, opening three hotels at Rajbagh, Nigeen Bagh and Tan marg.	From his professional profile
1 Oct 2025 †	Kaul applies to Kashmir’s tourism department to transfer the Pratap Villa Guest House from “Sanjay Kishan Kaul & others” to Kaul Hotels.
16 Oct 2025	AHNL issues its EGM notice for a preferential allotment of up to 2,31,80,000 shares to Elana Holdings.
28 Oct 2025	Kaul’s application is published as a public notice in Greater Kashmir.

2026

Date	Event	Note on the date
March 2026	By this date, AHNL has paid BL Projects over ₹2 crore in total, roughly ₹84 lakh more than the April 2022 – July 2023 payments.

Family connections 

Before we get into this layered investigation, we are providing family ties for reference. Following this could make it simpler to understand the connections mentioned in the story. 

From the beginning – who really owns Hyatt Regency, Delhi

A hotel becomes a hub of such dealings not by chance. It hugely depends on who controls the hotel and what the management of that hotel allows on its premises. They know. And if they know, and it continues to happen, their interests are aligned with whatever is going on at their hotel. 

If we follow that logic, it becomes imperative to understand who owns Hyatt Regency and what about that ownership makes the hotel the perfect location for wheeling-and-dealing. 

The Hyatt Regency Delhi is owned by Asian Hotels (North) Ltd. On the AHNL website, ownership is clearly indicated. 

AHNL is listed on the Stock Exchange (BSE and NSE) and has operated for almost 45 years. Asian Hotels introduced the brand Hyatt in India in early 1980. The company was incorporated in 1980 and was promoted by R S Saraf, R K Jatia, Chaman Lal Gupta, and three non-resident Indians, with Sushil Gupta and Shiv Jatia, their Indian associates. In 2010, Asian Hotels split into three. One of those factions is AHNL – Asian Hotels (North) Limited, which owns and operates Hyatt Regency, Delhi. 

Up until 2022-2023, the majority shareholding of AHNL was with promoters and related promoter groups. In their 2022-2023 financial report, AHNL says: 

The Company was promoted by the Jatia Group, comprising inter-alia, Mr. Shiv Kumar Jatia, Mr. Amritesh Jatia and in turn the companies held by them namely Fineline Holdings Ltd., Mauritius, Yans Enterprises (H.K.) Ltd., Mauritius and Asian Holdings Pvt. Ltd. Such persons directly or indirectly own and control various operating companies of the Jatia Group viz. Asian Hotels (North) Limited and Leading Hotels Limited. All the said constituents singularly and collectively, including the operating companies comprise the Jatia Group. Some of the said constituents exercise control over the Company as directors and/or shareholders. Presently, the promoters and promoter group stake stands at 50.69% of the total paid-up capital.

However, in the 2023-2024 financial report, the auditors’ report revealed that the promoters and promoter entities diluted their entire shareholding, and a large chunk of that was acquired by a woman called Shreya Agarwal. 

With this, Shreya Agarwal acquired 36,76,700 equity shares of the Company, representing 18.90% of the total issued and paid-up equity share capital of the Company on March 20, 2024. Accordingly, Shreya’s shareholding increased from 2.98% to 21.88%. 

By 2025, Kanta Agarwal was also a shareholder of AHNL, and by 2026, Shreya Agarwal’s shareholding had risen from 21.88% to 64.35%. 

How did Shreya Agarwal become a majority owner of Asian Hotels (North) Limited, with almost a 65% shareholding

In 2025-2026, Asian Hotels (North) Ltd issued preferential shares to Shreya Agarwal’s Singapore-based company, Elana Holdings Pte. Ltd. 

The maximum number of shares proposed to be allotted to Elana Holdings Pte. Ltd. was 2,31,80,000. The face value of the shares was Rs 10, issued at a premium of Rs 320. 

While Shreya gained control of AHNL only in 2026, the Agarwal family was involved in AHNL and held significant sway over its matters much before that, even while the Jatia group was still in charge. 

Shreya Agarwal’s name first appears in AHNL’s shareholding filings for the quarter ending September 2020. She held 2,18,000 shares, or 1.12% of the company.

She held that stake for nearly two years. In the June 2022 quarter, it rose to 2.08%, and by September 2022 to 2.98%. Every one of these purchases was made while the Jatia family entities, Yans Enterprises (H.K.) and Fineline Holdings, held 50.69% of AHNL and controlled the company.

Shreya Agarwal – relative of the promoter and director of AHNL

From the quarter ending September 2022, AHNL’s filings with the Bombay Stock Exchange place Shreya Agarwal in a very specific category: “Directors and their relatives (excluding independent directors and nominee directors)”. She is the only shareholder in that category, and she stays there for seven consecutive quarters, until March 2024.

In other words, AHNL told the stock exchange that Shreya Agarwal was a relative of one of its directors.

Which director? The filing does not say. But AHNL’s board in this period was small. Its corporate governance filings for December 2022 list six directors. Three of them were independent directors, whom the category expressly excludes. That leaves Chairman and Managing Director Amritesh Jatia, Executive Director Ashish Dhanuka, and one non-executive director: Akhilesh Bhuwalka.

Akhilesh Bhuwalka, then 35, was appointed to AHNL’s board on 18 June 2020. Shreya Agarwal’s name appears in AHNL’s shareholding filings for the very next quarter.

AHNL’s annual report lists Akhilesh Bhuwalka’s other directorships as Accordion Properties, Delaware Properties and Prithvi Tea Co. Company records show that all three are also companies of one Sanjay Bhuwalka, a name that will come up again later in this story.

Akhilesh Bhuwalka resigned from AHNL’s board at the close of business on 6 May 2024. In the very next filing, for June 2024, Shreya Agarwal is no longer shown as a director’s relative. She is listed as a Non-Resident Indian.

No document we have seen states in so many words that Akhilesh Bhuwalka is Shreya Agarwal’s relative. Ashish Dhanuka, the executive director, also left the board in May 2024. But of the directors the category could refer to, only Bhuwalka shares three family companies with Sanjay Bhuwalka. 

Per our sources, Akhilesh Bhuwalka is the brother-in-law of Sahul Agarwal, who is the husband of Shreya Agarwal. 

We found another interesting link. 

We found a court document listing Shreya Agarwal as a cousin of the Jatia family. 

Shreya Agarwal is described as Amritesh Jatia’s cousin. In Amritesh Jatia v. Vidhi Jatia, a matrimonial appeal, his wife’s counsel submitted that he “has sold his entire shareholding of 51% in Asian Hotels (North) Limited… to his cousin, Shreya Agarwal and others, and has received more than ₹110 crores outside India.” 

While this is an allegation by Amritesh Jatia’s wife in a matrimonial dispute, and not a finding of the court, it is the only document we have found that describes Shreya Agarwal as related to the Jatia family. 

Taken together, the filings suggest that even before the big takeover in 2024, which we discuss in the subsequent section, Shreya Agarwal was no ordinary minority shareholder. By AHNL’s own description, she was related to a member of its board, which we believe was Akhilesh Bhuwalka. When Bhuwalka resigned as a director, the filings stopped identifying her as a Director’s relative. However, she is also the cousin of the promoter – Amritesh Jatia, at least according to the court document we found. 

The takeover

Shreya Agarwal’s big move came on 20 March 2024, when she bought 36,76,700 shares, 18.90% of AHNL, taking her stake from 2.98% to 21.88%. Her disclosure to the exchanges named two “Persons Acting in Concert” with her: Suresh Kumar Agarwala and Kanta Agarwala. Who they are, and why that matters, we will explore subsequently. 

(Official records spell the family name Agarwala; we use Agarwal in this report)

The shares came from the Jatia promoter entity Yans Enterprises (H.K.), which, according to AHNL’s annual report, disposed of 20.97% of AHNL to “Mrs Shreya Agarwal & Mr Manohar Tikamdas Ruprell”.

The final step came in early 2026. Between 28 January and 3 February 2026, AHNL allotted 2,31,80,000 new shares at Rs 330 each, about Rs 765 crore in all, to Elana Holdings Pte. Ltd. of Singapore. Elana’s own disclosure to the exchange names Shreya Agarwal as the “Person Acting in Concert” with it. After the allotment, Elana held 54.37% and Shreya 9.98%: 64.35% together.

No open offer. Here is why

AHNL’s public shareholders were not given an open offer. The filings explain why. The allotment was made “in terms of Regulation 164A of SEBI ICDR Regulations“. Regulation 164A is a route SEBI created for financially stressed companies, and SEBI’s takeover rules exempt acquisitions made through it from the open-offer requirement.

AHNL did qualify as stressed. It had defaulted on dues to three lenders: Star Strength (to which DBS Bank had assigned its debt), Ambitious Cement Private Limited, and J.C. Flowers Asset Reconstruction Private Limited (to which Sammaan Capital had assigned its debt). The Rs 765 crore that came in from Elana was used to repay them in February 2026.

The exemption is legal. But it raises questions of its own. SEBI’s rules bar a stressed company from using this money to repay loans from its promoters, promoter group or group companies. So who stands behind Star Strength and Ambitious Cement?

And where did Elana’s Rs 765 crore come from? Part of the answer lies in a disclosure filed on 28 January 2026 by Vistra ITCL (India) Limited, a debenture trustee. Vistra was acting as agent of “ECP Ind V Pvt. Limited (i.e. the lender for the Relevant Financings being availed by Elana Holdings Pte. Ltd.)”. As part of that financing, Shreya Agarwal’s own AHNL shares were placed under a non-disposal undertaking, and AHNL agreed not to change its shareholding pattern without the trustee’s consent.

Even the question of who controls AHNL now gets two different answers. AHNL’s annual report for 2025-26 declares that “the Company does not have any promoter or promoter group” and that no individual, entity or group “exercises control over the affairs of the Company in the capacity of a promoter”. On the same page, it says that “the Company is a subsidiary of Elana Holdings PTE. Ltd.” 

This acquisition raises several questions. Who are Shreya Agarwal, Kanta Agarwal and the Agarwals acting in concert with her? Why did AHNL describe her, for seven straight quarters, as the relative of one of its directors? Further, why did AHNL systematically transfer ownership to Shreya and an entity she controls? If ownership was transferred, why was Elana Holdings still listed as a non-promoter? And perhaps the most important question of all – where do the links of Shreya Agarwal extend, since she had significant influence in AHNL even before she became the owner through her company? And where does the judiciary come into play? And how does it all tie to Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul? 

Shreya Agarwal – wife of businessman Sahul Agarwal

Shreya Agarwal, owner of Elana Holdings Pte. Ltd. and now the owner of Hyatt Regency, is the wife of Sahul Agarwal. 

We will explore why this connection is absolutely vital to our story. 

But how do we know Shreya Agarwal is Sahul Agarwal’s wife? 

In 2013, a company called Sahul Technologies Limited was incorporated in Kolkata. In 2016, the company changed its name to QuickTouch Technologies. 

Along with the name change, the registered office was also moved from Kolkata to Delhi. 

Interestingly, the current promoters of QuickTouch Technologies took over the company when the name changed from Sahul Technologies. Publicly available information suggests that Sahul Agarwal, Shreya Agarwal, and other family members were the initial owners of the company and still held shares in QuickTouch. 

If one checks the image closely, Sahul Agarwal held shares in the company, and another entity which held shares was Sahul Agarwal (HUF). The fact that an HUF (Hindu Undivided Family) held shares proves that Sahul Technologies was a family-run business, with wife Shreya Agarwal, mother Kanta Agarwal and other family members holding shares. 

Sahul Technologies in and of itself is not relevant to our story. It matters because it helps us trace Shreya Agarwal, the Hyatt Regency, and Elana Holdings to Sahul Agarwal. 

Our investigation into Sahul Agarwal is what breaks the nexus wide open. 

Who is Sahul Agarwal – husband of Shreya Agarwal and the de facto owner of AHNL

If Delhi-circle rumours are to be believed, Sahul Agarwal is a Grenadian citizen who currently resides in Dubai. A shadowy figure with immeasurable power, Sahul is a known face in professional circles, especially among members of the Judiciary. 

His proximity to the Judiciary is evidenced by this image. He is pictured with Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, who, from November 2022 until his retirement, was the second most senior judge of the Supreme Court after the Chief Justice of India. He served as a Supreme Court judge from 2017 until his retirement in 2023. 

According to the whistleblower, this image of Sahul Agarwal is from 2022, when Sanjay Kishan Kaul served as one of the Supreme Court’s most senior members. 

Remember this image. We will circle back to it later in this article. 

The internet, however, has hardly any trace of him. In fact, it’s hard to find a picture of him or his wife, which is odd given how notorious he is in Delhi circles and how wide his business network is. 

One of the only trails we found was about a company called Sahul Group, which established an e-waste plant in Dubai, according to Khaleej Times. 

By all accounts, Sahul Agarwal is a clandestine character. 

The links, however, run a bit deeper, and the picture of him with Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul is at the heart of this story. 

Daughter, son-in-law of Retired Judge Sanjay Kishan Kaul and their connection to Sahul Agarwal controlled AHNL 

While exploring AHNL, we found it is a party to a long list of court cases. In many of them, two names recur among its lawyers: Aakanksha Kaul Khorana and Adit Khorana.

The two are married. Aakanksha is the daughter of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, and Adit is his son-in-law.

Court records list Aakanksha Kaul as counsel for AHNL in nearly 300 orders since August 2021. They include Supreme Court hearings in 2022 and 2023, while her father, Sanjay Kishan Kaul, was a sitting judge of that court, though on benches he was not part of. 

Adit Khorana appeared alongside her for AHNL in 2023. 

Aakanksha Kaul (Justice Sanjay Kaul’s daughter) also worked for the Agarwal family beyond AHNL. In September 2026, she appeared in the Supreme Court for Sahul Agarwal’s mother, Kanta Agarwal, in two cases against Exclusive Capital and its promoter, Satya Prakash Bagla: on 1 and 22 September in Exclusive Capital Ltd v. Kanta Agarwala (Civil Appeal 15207/2025), and on 8 September in Satya Prakash Bagla v. Kanta Agarwala (Civil Appeals 12473-74/2026). 

On each of those dates, she was on a team. A member of the same team also represented the Agarwals against Exclusive Capital at the NCLAT, and represented Sanjay Bhuwalka (who, according to our sources, is Shreya Agarwal’s father), Sahul Agarwal’s father-in-law.

Adit Khorana and ‘Kaul Hotels’

Once it was established that Adit Khorana, Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s son-in-law, is the legal representative of the Sahul Agarwal-controlled AHNL and appeared for it alongside his wife in 2023, we needed to look into Khorana’s antecedents and whether he had deeper connections to Sahul Agarwal. 

In our investigation into Adit Khorana, we found a company called Kaul Hotels Private Limited, with Smita Khorana as the director. 

We obtained the Auditor’s Report for Kaul Hotels Private Limited and discovered that Adit Khorana owned 99.99% of the company’s shares. 

In the Auditor’s Report filed for the year ending 31^st March 2025, Adit Khorana was listed as a promoter holding 99.9999% of Kaul Hotels Private Limited’s shares. The other shareholder was a mysterious Bilal Ahmed Sofi, a man who has no trace on the internet. 

Bilal Ahmed Sofi held only 1 share in the company, while Adit Khorana held 999999 shares. Smita Khorana, on the other hand, is listed as a director of the company along with Sofi. The report lists Adit Khorana as a ‘relative’ of Smita Khorana. 

The company, Kaul Hotels, is registered in Kashmir. It was incorporated in 2023.

While Adit Khorana owns a hotel company in Kashmir, his father-in-law, Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, admitted in an interview that he had a house in Kashmir, which he then converted into a hotel. 

Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s Pratap Villa is now a hotel, owned by Kaul Hotels

While Adit Khorana owns and operates Kaul Hotels, Sanjay Kishan Kaul is deeply intertwined with the company and the hospitality business. 

As mentioned earlier, in 2023, Sanjay Kishan Kaul said in an interview that after years of fleeing Kashmir, he went back to the state. There, he had a house which he redid for the hospitality sector.

During this investigation, OpIndia tried to find which hotel was owned by Sanjay Kishan Kaul, but found very little trace of the name. The lack of information on the hotel owned by Sanjay Kishan Kaul seemed odd. He admitted in 2023 that he redid one of his houses for the hospitality sector. So why was there no trace of which hotel he owns? 

Our next step was to check the asset disclosure of Supreme Court judges. We assumed that if he owned a hotel, it would be mentioned in his Supreme Court asset disclosure. Interestingly, Sanjay Kishan Kaul never disclosed his assets after becoming a Supreme Court judge. 

In 2010, however, he had declared his assets while he was a High Court judge. According to a Hindustan Times report, Justice Kaul was the richest among the HC judges who had declared their assets. 

“The richest among the judges is Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul who, along with his wife, owns shares in eight landed properties in Kashmir, Delhi and NCR. He also declared two three-bedroom flats in the Commonwealth Games Village purchased in his wife’s name. He has also invested in shares and mutual funds”, HT had reported at the time. 

If Kaul had declared his Kashmir properties in 2010, why did he not declare his properties, including the hotel, when he became an SC judge? Only he can answer that. 

To identify which hotel could possibly be his, given the judge’s glaring lack of disclosure, we started looking into Kaul Hotels and its properties. 

At the outset, what stood out was that the registered office of Kaul Hotels in Kashmir was at Pratap Villa, Rajbagh, near Govt Silk Factory, Jawahar Nagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India – 190008. 

We tried to find where Pratap Villa was and what kind of property it is. 

Surprisingly, we only found 1 video of the villa on Instagram. The same video had been shared on Facebook. In the video, a woman talked about Pratap Villa and how it offered an exclusive, luxurious living experience. The video mentioned that it was owned by a Kashmiri family. The video also mentioned that the family was lucky to be living there. 

Together, these two facts make the revelation interesting. The video essentially said that the family was living there, and that it was about to offer luxurious and experiential living– a house with 6 suites. This meant that the private property had been turned into a hospitality offering. 

This aligns with what Sanjay Kishan Kaul said in his interview. He said he had a private house that he had converted for the hospitality sector. The fact that his son-in-law’s hotel company listed that same address as a house turned into a hotel, just as Kaul mentioned in his interview, makes it reasonable to assume this property belonged to Sanjay Kishan Kaul. 

This also means Kaul Hotels, owned by Adit Khorana, was operating out of Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s Kashmir residence, and any claim that he did not know what the company was or what it did would be misrepresentation at best, and an outright lie at worst. 

Interestingly, we also found Sanjay Kishan Kaul applying to the Department of Tourism, Kashmir, to change the title of the registered Pratap Villa Guest House, standing in the name of “Sanjay Kishan Kaul & others”, to “Kaul Hotels Pvt. Ltd. (The Pratap Villa)” in October 2025. 

When we started inquiring about Pratap Villa, our whistleblower provided images of the Villa under construction. There are pictures of the Villa being constructed in 2022 – while Sanjay Kishan Kaul was one of the most senior judges of the Supreme Court of India. 

The Pratap Villa is situated at Rajbagh. 

Kaul Hotels operates 3 hotels – 3 hotels which provide further clues 

Tripurari Singh lists himself as the GM of Kaul Hotels on LinkedIn and in.gold.pro. In one profile, he says that, as GM of Kaul Hotels, he manages Ultra-Luxury Boutique hotels in Srinagar. 

He mentions 3 properties: 

Rajbagh 

Nigeen Bagh

Tan Marg

Given that Pratap Villa is situated in Rajbagh, Singh’s profile indicates that Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s Pratap Villa is now a hotel owned by Kaul Hotels. 

The other two properties listed, in Nigeen Bagh and Tang Marg, are also significant, and we will explore them and their significance further in this report. 

Deeper links between Kaul Hotels and Sahul Agarwal

When we delved into the Auditor’s Report of Kaul Hotels Private Limited, 3 companies which had extended unsecured loans to the company stood out. 

1. Angel Expanders Private Limited 
2. Evaan Holding Private Limited 
3. Standard Capital Markets Limited 

We investigated each of these companies to determine whether they had any links. 

Evaan Holding Private Limited 

Even a cursory Google search reveals that one of the Directors of Evaan Holding Private Limited is Kanta Agarwal, Sahul Agarwal’s mother. OpIndia acquired the shareholding pattern of Evaan Holdings Pvt Ltd, revealing that, cumulatively, 90% of Evaan’s shares are held by Kanta Agarwal and Suresh Kumar Agarwal – the parents of Sahul Agarwal. 

Another shareholder in Evaan Holdings is Shreya Agarwal, Sahul Agarwal’s wife. Earlier in the story, we revealed how Shreya Agarwal, through her Singapore-based company Elana, owns AHNL and Hyatt Regency, Delhi. 

Clearly, Evaan is a front organisation of Sahul Agarwal, which extended unsecured loans to the son-in-law of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul for reasons that are not evident. 

The unsecured loan, extended to Kaul Hotels Pvt Ltd by the Sahul Agarwal front Evaan Holdings, was for Rs 66.52 lakh. 

Interestingly, Evaan extended the unsecured loan to Kaul Hotels in the 2023-2024 period, according to the Auditor’s Report. Sanjay Kishan Kaul retired from the Supreme Court on 25^th December 2023. There is a strong likelihood that the loan was extended while Kaul was one of the senior-most judges of the Supreme Court or in the weeks following his retirement. 

Angel Expanders Private Limited 

Angel Expanders is another company which extended an unsecured loan of Rs 1,01,120 to Kaul Hotels Pvt Ltd in 2024, which was raised to Rs 13,00,000 in 2025. Two directors of that company are Sumit Shyam Lulla and Pushpa Dutta. According to the whistleblower, Sumit Shyam Lulla is an employee and frontman for Sahul Agarwal, and Pushpa Dutta is Lulla’s mother-in-law. 

The mysterious payment by Sahul Agarwal front

A comparison of Kaul Hotels’ audited financial statements for the years ended 31 March 2024 and 31 March 2025 reveals a significant change in the company’s unsecured borrowing structure. Back in FY 2023-24, the company was balancing three main lenders. Evaan Holdings at roughly ₹66.52 lakh, Adit Khorana at ₹60 lakh, and a tiny ₹1.01 lakh from Angel Expanders, bringing their total debt to about ₹1.27 crore. Fast forward just one year to March 2025, and the landscape looks completely different. Evaan’s loan vanished entirely, Adit Khorana’s balance dropped sharply to ₹15 lakh, and Angel Expanders rose up to ₹13 lakh. Then there’s a brand-new entry, Standard Capital Markets Limited, showing up out of nowhere with an about ₹1.5 crore balance, instantly making them the dominant player accounting for roughly 84% of all unsecured debt.

On paper, the numbers check out. The influx from Standard Capital and the slight bump in Angel’s balance total about ₹1.62 crore, and when you subtract the payoffs to Evaan and Adit, you get a clean net increase of around ₹50.5 lakh. But the official accounts seem to gloss over the backstory. 

Did Standard Capital’s cash go straight toward clearing out Evaan and shrinking Adit’s loan? The paperwork doesn’t explicitly link them, but the timing raises questions. 

When a fresh lender suddenly sweeps in to dominate the debt while old liabilities quietly disappear, one has to wonder if there is more than meets the eye.

Standard Capital Markets Limited and the financial nexus of Sahul Agarwal

Standard Capital Markets Limited suddenly emerged as the biggest unsecured lender to Kaul Hotels Private Limited. By March 2025, Kaul Hotels’ books showed an approx. ₹1.5 crore owed to Standard Capital, capturing roughly 84% of its total unsecured debt, up from zero the year prior.

Behind the scenes, corporate threads get tangled fast. Ram Gopal Jindal, who took over as Standard Capital’s managing director in 2022, shares historical ties to Sahul Agarwal’s old business, Sahul Technologies. Back in 2016, Jindal’s family bought a chunk of shares from Sahul and Suresh Kumar Agarwal, and his son Gaurav chaired Standard Capital until recently, which is bound to raise eyebrows.

Standard Capital also appears in two other disputes. In October 2024, it bought a ₹150 crore loan owed by Veer Chemicals, and days later Veer defaulted. Sumit Shyam Lulla, whom sources describe as Sahul Agarwal’s frontman, then joined Veer’s board with Pushpa Dutta. Both are directors of Angel Expanders, another Kaul Hotels lender. Standard Capital then began insolvency proceedings against Veer. Separately, before the NCLAT, Exclusive Capital alleges that AHNL’s loan rights were assigned to Standard Capital in October 2023 without board approval.

Add it all up, and Standard Capital sits right at the centre of a complex financial web. But this is just scratching the surface. 

These connections are only part of a much larger story, and a detailed story on Standard Capital’s market, ownership, deeper links to Sahul Agarwal and financial dealings will be published soon.

BL Projects, funded by Sahul Agarwal fronts, constructed hotels for the Kaul family? 

Another name which came up in the Auditor’s Report of Kaul Hotels Private Limited was ‘BL Projects’. The report listed BL Projects under ‘Trade Payables’, which means that BL Projects was a vendor and Kaul Hotels Private Limited had to pay BL Projects approximately Rs 49,70,000. This amount is shown in their auditor’s report, and according to it, this amount was payable in 2024 and carried forward to 2025.

The company BL Projects is a sole proprietorship, registered in 2018, with the sole proprietor being Sunita Gupta. According to GST service records, the company is involved in construction services in respect of commercial or industrial buildings. 

OpIndia obtained BL Projects’ bank statements through a whistleblower, and the link was startling. Several transactions show that AHNL paid over a crore to BL Projects around the same time a contract was handed out to another Sahul Agarwal front for the architecture of a hotel in Kashmir. 

From 11th April 2022 to 21st July 2023, 10 transactions were made in which Asian Hotels (North) Limited paid large sums to BL Projects. The total transfer in this period from AHNL (then controlled by the Jatia group, with Sahul Agarwal and his wife holding considerable influence) to BL Projects was Rs 1,16,39,064. By March 2026, AHNL had paid over Rs 2 crores to BL Projects. 

Further, bank statements show that even Angel Expanders, suspected to be another Sahul Agarwal front, paid almost Rs 4 lakhs to BL Projects in January 2025. 

A reader may ask a fair question here. These payments were made between April 2022 and July 2023. At that time, the Agarwals did not control AHNL. The Jatia group did. So how can AHNL’s payments be connected to Sahul Agarwal?

The answer lies in the filings we laid out earlier. By April 2022, Shreya Agarwal had already been an AHNL shareholder for a year and a half. From September 2022, AHNL itself classified her as the relative of one of its directors, and the director that classification most plausibly points to is Akhilesh Bhuwalka, who shares three family companies with Sanjay Bhuwalka, the father of Shreya Agarwal.

The family was also present at the hotel itself. Evaan Holdings, the company that lent Rs 66.52 lakh to Kaul Hotels, was incorporated on 26 October 2022, right in the middle of the period when AHNL was paying BL Projects. Its first directors were Sanjay Bhuwalka and Kanta Agarwal. And its registered office, according to company records, is “No.3006, 3rd Floor, Block-A, Hotel, Hyatt Regency, Bhikaji Cama Place”. 

AHNL’s own accounts describe “New Tower Block A in Hyatt Regency Delhi” as part of the hotel property pledged to its lenders.

Angel Expanders, which paid BL Projects almost Rs 4 lakh and lent money to Kaul Hotels, also turns up on AHNL’s share register. By June 2024, “Angel Expanders Pvt Ltd” held 7,84,284 shares, or 4.03% of AHNL.

So, when AHNL was paying BL Projects, a woman AHNL described as a director’s relative was on its share register; the director the filings point to was a Bhuwalka, and an Agarwal-Bhuwalka company was registered at the Hyatt’s address. The Agarwals did not yet own AHNL. But they were hardly outsiders and held considerable influence.

Essentially, the very Angel Expanders (Sahul front) which extended an unsecured loan to Kaul Hotels (owned by the son-in-law of Sanjay Kishan Kaul) was also funding BL Projects, which constructs hotels and was Kaul Hotels’ vendor. This could potentially mean Sahul Agarwal was routing money to Kaul Hotels for hotel construction from various quarters and several of his front companies.  

So far, we have understood that 3 Sahul Agarwal front companies (Angel Expanders, Evaan Holdings and Standard Capital) extended unsecured loans to Adit Khorana-owned Kaul Hotels. Further, the same Sahul Agarwal fronts, namely Angel Expanders and AHNL, were funding BL Projects, which was a vendor of Kaul Hotels for the construction of hotels. It, therefore, seems like Sahul Agarwal was almost wholly funding Adit Khorana’s hospitality business, which includes the construction of hotels. 

Another interesting aspect is this. 

AHNL started paying BL Projects in 2022. Kaul Hotels shows BL Projects as a vendor in 2024 and 2025. 

BL Projects was constructing hotels after payments by Sahul-controlled entities, starting in 2022. That is exactly when the picture of Sanjay Kishan Kaul with Sahul Agarwal was taken in Kashmir. 

Kaul Hotels, however, was incorporated only in 2023. 

This raises an important question: after receiving funding from Sahul Agarwal-controlled entities, was BL Projects constructing hotels that Kaul Hotels eventually took over in 2023, after it was incorporated? 

An obvious question is whether AHNL was paying BL Projects to construct a hotel for itself, not Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s family, given that Kaul Hotels was incorporated only in 2023. However, AHNL, according to its documents, has no hotel under its umbrella other than Hyatt Regency, Delhi. If it does not have a property in Kashmir at all, and the same nexus has deep financial transactions both with Kaul Hotels in 2025 and BL Projects since 2022, the year when Sanjay Kishan Kaul was photographed with Sahul Agarwal, there seems to be no logical explanation for AHNL to fund BL Projects, which then turns up as vendor in Kaul Hotels.

Architecture Discipline – whose client was a Sahul Agarwal front firm involved in the construction of hotels by Kaul Hotels 

Our investigation also led us to a firm which was handed the architecture contract for the hotels in Kashmir. The name of the firm was ‘Architecture Discipline’ – a Delhi-based architecture firm.

Two contract notes from 2022 (the year Sanjay Kishan Kaul was photographed with Sahul Agarwal) handed to OpIndia by the whistleblower mention the “client” as one ‘Sanjay Bhuwalka’, owns a Kolkata-based firm. According to our sources, Sanjay Bhuwalka is the father of Shreya Agarwal (wife of Sahul Agarwal). His relative, Akhilesh Bhuwalka, was also involved in AHNL, as we investigated earlier, and was listed as Shreya Agarwal’s relative.  

Let’s analyse the two contract notes a little more closely. 

The first contract note is for a ‘lakeside holiday home for his family’ in Kashmir, Nigeen Bagh. 

It is for a sprawling villa in Nigeen Bagh, Kashmir, including houseboats and floating houseboats. 

It says the contract is to design a sprawling “family home” constructed on 6 acres, with possibly 4 floating houseboats and 4 ground houseboats. 

The second contract note in our possession is for constructing a hotel in Tan Marg. 

This one says that the “clients are hoteliers and want to develop this site as a contemporary and timeless response to the region and program”. 

These two notes are interesting for multiple reasons. 

First:

Earlier in the article, we had analysed the public profile of the General Manager of Kaul Hotels. In his profile, he had mentioned three luxury boutique hotels that he was responsible for as a representative of Kaul Hotels. The three locations he mentioned were Rajbagh (Pratap Villa), Tan Marg and Nigeen Bagh (two locations mentioned in the contract notes above). 

Another confirmation that Sanjay Kishan Kaul owns ancestral properties in these locations comes from a judgment of the High Court and the Supreme Court regarding Kaul’s ancestral property at Tan Marg. 

Essentially, in 2007, Justice Kaul approached the High Court because the government was taking over his ancestral land. The High Court eventually stayed that decision of the government, and the HC order was upheld by the Supreme Court. 

The following is an excerpt from that judgment: 

This potentially means that Sanjay Kishan Kaul has ancestral properties in the areas mentioned, not only by the GM of Kaul Hotels but also in the contract notes.

Second: 

Contract note 2 says that the clients, Sanjay Bhuwalka through his company Sulojay, are hoteliers who want to construct a hotel at Tan Marg. 

However, our investigation says that Sulojay Realty is primarily a construction company and does not have any public trace of being in the hotel industry. 

That rules out Sulojay itself being the ‘hoteliers’ mentioned in the contract note. 

OpIndia is also in possession of tax invoices which confirm that Sulojay paid almost 50 lakhs to Architecture Discipline on 8^th March 2022 – about Rs 18 lakhs for the Nigeen Bagh contract and about Rs 31 lakhs for the Tan Marg contract. 

While the payments were made in 2022, the Architecture Discipline website makes no mention of a residential or hospitality project in Kashmir. 

One could say that since Sanjay Bhuwalka’s daughter Shreya was involved in the hotel business through AHNL, he may have been referring to that link. That is a possibility. However, to date, no hotel has been built under the AHNL umbrella. We also could not find a hotel registered to Sanjay Bhuwalka himself.

The contract notes are dated 2022 – the same year Sanjay Kishan Kaul was photographed with Sahul Agarwal. 

In the absence of any other evidence, and given the strong link between Bhuwalka, Sulojay and Sahul Agarwal, one is pressed to ask if the hotels being constructed in Tan Marg and Nigeen Bagh were the properties of Kaul Hotels, given that the manager of Kaul Hotels mentions the very locations as hotels he manages, and Sanjay Kishan Kaul too has attested to having ancestral properties at least in Raj Bagh (Pratap Villa) and Tan Marg. 

The construction and architecture started with Sahul-funded and controlled entities, in the very areas where Sanjay Kishan Kaul owns ancestral land (we can confirm 2 of these three locations at least, from publicly available documents), in the same year that Kaul was photographed with Sahul Agarwal. Months later, Kaul Hotels was incorporated, and the hotels in the same area were run/owned by it. Kaul Hotels is, in turn, owned by Kaul’s son-in-law and operated from Kaul’s property – Pratap Villa. 

Who is Sanjay Bhuwalka, the ‘client’ of Architecture Discipline, constructing hotel in Tan Marg and Nigeen Bagh? 

According to our sources, Sanjay Bhuwalka is the father-in-law of Sahul Agarwal (Father of Shreya Agarwal). He is also a shareholder in Evaan Holdings Private Limited. Evaan, as one would recall, is a Sahul Agarwal front company, 90% owned by his parents, in which his wife, Shreya Agarwal, also holds shares. His relative, Akhilesh Bhuwalka, was also involved in AHNL, now controlled by Sahul Agarwal’s wife. 

Sulojay Realty Pvt Ltd

We revealed that a Delhi-based firm named Architecture Discipline bagged the architecture contract for the hotels coming up in Tan Marg and Nigeen Bagh. According to a contract note obtained by OpIndia, the client on record was Sanjay Bhuwalka, who holds shares in Evaan Holdings Private Limited and is, as sources point out, Sahul Agarwal’s father-in-law. The paperwork listed Bhuwalka as a Director of Sulojay Realty Private Limited.

Under these deals, Architecture Discipline took on a ₹2 crore project for a 50-room, 90,000-square-foot hotel in Tan Marg, along with a ₹1 crore job in Srinagar’s Nigeen Bagh for an 18,000-square-foot villa paired with floating and land-based houseboats.

Sulojay Realty was incorporated in Kolkata on 20 March 2021. According to an NCLAT judgment of 30 June 2026, Sanjay Kumar Bhuwalka was one of its directors and its majority shareholder, and the rest was held by the Agarwal family, which includes Sahul Agarwal’s parents, Kanta and Suresh Agarwal. Between April 2021 and May 2022, Bhuwalka lent the company ₹7.47 crore.

Sulojay’s financial statements show where else its money came from and where it went. Between 2021 and 2022, it took unsecured loans from Angel Expanders (A Sahul front) and from Sahul’s parents. It had also lent ₹75 lakh to Asian Hotels (North), the company that owns Hyatt Regency Delhi and that Sahul’s wife would go on to control.

Sulojay also borrowed from Exclusive Capital Limited, a Delhi non-banking finance company in which Satya Prakash Bagla holds 90%. Exclusive Capital lent Sulojay ₹5 crore on 14 January 2022, while the Bhuwalka and Agarwal families still owned it.

On 2 June 2022, the two families sold their entire holding in Sulojay to Exclusive Motors Private Limited, a Bagla company. Bhuwalka resigned from the board, and Bagla and Achal Kumar Jindal took control. Two days later, Exclusive Capital lent Sulojay another ₹12 crore. The NCLAT records that, after the change in management, Sulojay paid about ₹55.66 crore to members of the Agarwal family towards repayment of their loans.

The ties held through 2022. On 5 September 2022, Kanta and Suresh Agarwal bought 1,17,325 shares each in Exclusive Capital. By then, Exclusive Capital held 3% of AHNL and Exclusive Motors 1.25%. Exclusive Capital had lent AHNL ₹2.5 crore and ₹1.66 crore in 2021-22. On 28 December 2022, it took over all of IndusInd Bank’s loans to AHNL, including a ₹100.58 crore term loan. 

The client on Architecture Discipline’s contract note was, until June 2022, the majority owner of a company co-owned by Sahul Agarwal’s parents, funded by them, and lending to the company that owns Hyatt Regency Delhi now and held significant influence throughout through Shreya Agarwal. 

Also pertinent is that Sulojay’s account shows Architecture Discipline as a liability, meaning Sulojay had to pay the company, probably for the contract notes which we have explained earlier. 

Several questions come to mind, and one has to ask what the role of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul was in the entire round-tripping of the transaction and if there was any quid pro quo between then sitting SC Judge Kaul and Sahul Agarwal. 

It appears evident that the Kashmir hotel that Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul spoke of was constructed by the Kaul Hotels, a company owned by his son-in-law. However, the transaction trail points to Adit Khorana (son-in-law of Sanjay Kishan Kaul and the lawyer of AHNL) and his company merely being a conduit in the construction of the hotel. The transaction points to Sahul Agarwal and his front organisations paying Kaul Hotels substantially.

What Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul must answer 

In such a scenario, one has to ask the following questions: 

1. Why would Sahul Agarwal, a shady businessman who owns the hotel, which is a preferred hub for judicial wheeling-and-dealing, supposedly pay for a hotel owned by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul? 
2. Adit Khorana might say as a defence that the unsecured loans, which were extended to his company, Kaul Hotels, were in exchange for his legal services. However, why did Khorana feel the need to accept his remuneration in the form of an unsecured loan from a known tout to a company which is unrelated to his legal profession?
3. Was Sanjay Kishan Kaul aware of the round-tripping transactions that were flowing from Sahul Agarwal for the benefit of his hotel? 
4. If he was aware, why did he feel comfortable accepting such ‘favours’ from Sahul Agarwal? 
5. Was there a quid pro quo arrangement between Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Sahul Agarwal? 
6. If there was, what was Sanjay Kishan Kaul’s side of the bargain? 

We, therefore, urge Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul to answer the following questions: 

1. Pratap Villa: it stood in your name and your family’s until 2025, and was renovated in 2022 while you sat on the Supreme Court. Who paid for that work, and how much did it cost?
2. The loans: did you know your son-in-law’s hotel company was taking unsecured loans from a company owned by Sahul Agarwal’s parents, registered at the Hyatt Regency?
3. The 2022 photograph: when and where were you photographed with Sahul Agarwal, and how often did you meet him while you were a judge?
4. Tan marg and Nigeen Bagh: your family has ancestral land there. Why was Sahul Agarwal’s father-in-law the client on the architecture contracts for hotels at those places, hotels in the same locations that your son-in-law’s company now says it manages? Are they the same hotels? 
5. The builder, BL Projects, which Kaul Hotels owes ₹49.7 lakh to, received ₹1,16,39,064 from AHNL during the same period. Was any of that money spent on your family’s properties?
6. Disclosure to the court: While your daughter was appearing for AHNL in the Supreme Court, did you disclose your family’s professional ties to AHNL and the Agarwal family to the Chief Justice? Did you recuse yourself from any matter involving AHNL, the Agarwals or their companies?
7. Asset declarations: you declared your Kashmir properties as a High Court judge in 2010. Why did you never publicly disclose your assets as a Supreme Court judge, while one of those properties was being turned into a hotel?
8. The transfer: on what terms, and at what valuation, is Pratap Villa being moved to Kaul Hotels? Is the company paying your family for it? The same company which is getting money through Sahul Agarwal fronts? 
9. Bilal Ahmed Sofi: who is he? He holds the single share in Kaul Hotels not owned by Adit Khorana.
10. For Adit Khorana: if these loans were payment for legal work, why were they paid as unsecured loans to a hotel company rather than as fees to a lawyer?
11. The image with Sahul Agarwal is from the same time that you were a Supreme Court judge and the same year (2022) when the construction of Pratap Villa started. It is also the same year when payments were made to and from Sahul fronts allegedly for the construction of hotels in the exact locations where Kaul Hotels owns hotels now. Can you explain if these properties were discussed with Sahul Agarwal?

The Judiciary in India often mistakes itself for contemporary Gods. They dispense judgements – moral and legal – and the sheep are meant to simply bow their heads and accept their fate – sealed by the Gods in black coats. They expect resolute loyalty and submission, much like the vengeful Abrahamic God who would smite anyone who dares to disobey. Questioning the Judiciary is quite literally akin to religious blasphemy. While in some faiths, one may be rewarded by unbridled violence, when it comes to the Gods in black coats, heathens are smitten with contempt. 

As the saying goes, and we must thank Plutarch for making our jobs easier, Caesar’s wife must be above suspicion. But when it comes to the Judiciary, the multiple wives of Caesar are soaked in the putrid odour of corruption and impropriety. It’s time our Lords and Saviours pick up a soap, wash that odour off their extremities and provide answers to the very heathens they judge.