A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court today set aside a single‑judge’s interim order that had restrained three banks and auditor BDO India LLP from taking action against Anil Ambani under the RBI’s 2024 Master Directions on fraud classification [Bank of Baroda v. Anil Ambani & Ors. and connected petitions].

The Bench of Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar and Justice Gautam Ankhad called the single judge’s judgment “perverse."

The copy of the judgment is awaited.

Ambani's counsel prayed for a stay of today's decision for at least 4 weeks, claiming that other pending suits that relied on the report would be affected by the reversal of the stay.

However, the Division Bench refused to grant such a stay, holding that it would amount to continuing an illegal order. 

“As we have already held that the order challenged is illegal and suffers from decisional irregularity and illegality, to sustain the operation of this order, shall amount to continuing the illegal order for the next 4 weeks and perpetuating the illegality. Thus, the request for stay on the operation of this judgment is declined," the Division Bench held.

The Division Bench passed the ruling on an appeal by the Bank of Baroda, IDBI Bank, Indian Overseas Bank and BDO India LLP, who had challenged an order passed by Justice Milind Jadhav in December 2025.

The single judge Bench order under challenge had restrained the banks from taking any coercive action against Anil Ambani on the strength of a forensic audit report into Reliance Communications and group entities. 

Justice Jadhav had held that under the 2024 Master Directions, a forensic report used for fraud classification must be prepared by a statutory auditor registered with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), and noted that the report in Ambani’s case was signed by a person not registered with ICAI. 

On that prima facie view, the single judge had stayed all coercive steps by the three banks that were founded on the October 2020 forensic audit report.​

In the appeal before the Division Bench, the banks had argued that Ambani’s suit was “hopelessly time‑barred” and rested entirely on an RTI application filed by a third party seeking BDO’s registration details. 

They claimed that Ambani never disputed the 2021 forensic report’s findings on alleged fund siphoning, fictitious debtors and misuse of bank loans, and had challenged it only on the ground that the signatory was not a member of ICAI. 

They said the single‑judge order virtually nullified the RBI’s Master Directions, which debar persons classified as fraud from raising funds or seeking credit for five years. 

They also raised apprehensions that such reliefs could open the floodgates and cast doubt on past fraud classifications. 

The audit firm, meanwhile, pointed out that it was a SEBI-approved forensic auditor.