No clue on businessman missing after market crash

Shiv Kumar
Tribune News Service
Mumbai, October 22

The Mumbai police are still on the lookout for Harshad Thakkar, Chairman and Managing Director, Ashapura Intimates Fashion Limited, ever since he went missing on October 2 from his office in Central Mumbai’s Dadar area.

According to the duty officer at the Dadar police station, a missing person complaint was filed by Thakkar’s wife Darshana after she found a note written by Harshad seeking forgiveness from people who suffered losses because of him.  “I don’t want anything from anyone. I don’t have any requirements and I don’t know what will happen to me. I am asking for your forgiveness. I can’t live with burden of the fact that I am responsible for the losses suffered by so many people,” the note written in Gujarati by Harshad stated.

“Thakkar’s phone is switched off and his car too is untraceable,” inspector Diwakar Shelke said. Last weekend, the police sought Thakkar’s family members’ DNA samples after an unidentified body was found at Marine Drive. They were waiting for the lab results.

Analysts say, the stock was hammered down (touched the lower circuit of Rs 119.50 with just 80 shares traded) and members of the promoter group who had pledged their shares to borrow money saw the holdings being dumped in the market after they failed to cough up extra margins. In his note, Thakkar said he tried to maintain the stock price by buying as much as his position allowed him to, but bear hammering by his rivals caused him severe losses.

Rags to riches...

Harshad Thakkar was a rags-to-riches story. He started his career as a lingerie salesman in 1993 and went on to start Ashapura Intimates Fashions Ltd. The company was listed in the Bombay Stock Exchange on 2013. The stock price touched a high of Rs 568.95 before going into free fall since last month’s meltdown