Two Years of Silence: The Unanswered Questions in Ankiti Bose’s Sexual Harassment FIR Against Former Zilingo Colleagues

On 23 April 2024, nearly two years after she was terminated as CEO of Zilingo, Ankiti Bose walked into Kasturba Marg Police Station in Borivali East, Mumbai, and filed a criminal complaint. The same day, Mumbai Police registered an FIR against her co-founder Dhruv Kapoor and former COO Aadi Vaidya. The FIR invoked, among other provisions, Sections 354A and 354D of the Indian Penal Code — sexual harassment and stalking — alongside broader allegations of cheating, criminal conspiracy, criminal intimidation, mental harassment, coercion over shares, and suppression of company information.

The complaint described alleged conduct stretching back to 2020–2021, including a claimed demand for sexual favours in March 2021 tied to her continued position as CEO. Kapoor and Vaidya immediately and publicly rejected every allegation as baseless, untrue, malicious, and retaliatory. Kapoor explicitly linked the complaint to the earlier board investigation that had led to Bose’s removal.

That sequence — financial investigation first, formal sexual-harassment complaints only after suspension, criminal FIR almost 23 months after termination — is the central, unresolved fact of this case. It is the fact that any serious examination of the dispute must confront.

The Timeline That Cannot Be Softened

Zilingo suspended Bose on 31 March 2022 after the board received complaints concerning the company’s finances. The suspension became public on 12–13 April. On 20 May 2022 the company terminated her “with cause,” stating that an independent forensic investigation by Kroll into “serious financial irregularities” had been completed. The termination letter, according to people familiar with it, cited insubordination, neglect of duties, failure to produce documents, failure to present herself for questioning, breach of her employment agreement, and breakdown of trust. It did not, according to that reporting, expressly accuse her of a specific fraudulent transaction.

Bose has consistently denied financial wrongdoing. She has said she was denied adequate access to documents and staff after suspension, that she participated in multiple Kroll interviews, and that the process was predetermined. She has also said she never received the full Kroll or Deloitte reports.

According to Zilingo, Bose first formally brought harassment-related issues to the board on 11 April 2022 — eleven days after her suspension. The company commissioned Deloitte to examine those allegations and later stated that it had taken appropriate action. Bose has disputed aspects of the process and the characterisation of timing. Sources close to her have claimed she raised leadership and related concerns as early as August 2021. The two chronologies remain contested. What is not contested is that the formal board-level harassment process began only after the financial investigation and suspension were already under way.

Deloitte’s conclusions have never been made public. Neither has Kroll’s full report. Bose has repeatedly said she was not given either document. The public is therefore left with company statements, media reconstructions based on anonymous sources, Bose’s denials, and the later criminal complaint — but no primary forensic findings.

Why the Two-Year Gap?

Bose’s own explanation, given through her lawyers at the time of the FIR, was that she had taken a new job in Singapore and therefore could not travel to Mumbai earlier to lodge a formal complaint. She had lived and worked in Singapore since 2016. After her termination she remained there, gave interviews from Singapore, and stated she had new employment. Only in April 2024 did she travel to Mumbai to file.

That explanation raises immediate questions. Sexual harassment and stalking are serious offences. If the conduct she now alleges was genuine and ongoing — including threats to her safety, mental pressure intended to drive her toward self-harm, and a demand for sexual favours linked to her job — why did the new Singapore position take precedence for nearly two years? Why was the complaint not filed in Singapore, where she lived, worked, and where Zilingo was headquartered? Why was the first formal criminal step taken only after she chose to travel to India?

Singapore’s system for contested sexual-harassment cases typically concludes within roughly 9 to 12 months. Filing a false criminal complaint there carries a potential sentence of up to two years’ imprisonment. Bose chose the Indian criminal process instead, nearly two years after the events she describes, and only after the financial investigation, her termination, Zilingo’s collapse into liquidation, and her own subsequent repositioning as an investor through Terra-Invest.

The sequence itself is not complicated. Financial scrutiny and suspension came first. Formal harassment complaints to the board followed the suspension. Criminal allegations of sexual harassment and stalking were lodged almost two years later. Critics of Bose’s account argue that this order is the opposite of what one would expect if the sexual misconduct had been the primary, contemporaneous grievance. Supporters of her account argue that victims of workplace power imbalances often delay reporting, that she was cut off from company systems after suspension, and that the earlier board process was itself compromised. Both positions exist. Only one sequence of events is documented.

The Allegations and the Denials

The FIR, as reported, alleges that Kapoor and Vaidya demanded sexual favours in March 2021 in exchange for allowing Bose to remain CEO; that she was subjected to lewd language and sexually explicit messages, some from untraceable or disappearing accounts; that fake WhatsApp communications in her name were contemplated or created; that she was stalked and targeted online; that threats were made concerning her career, shareholding, safety and mental state; that company information was concealed or manipulated; and that loss-making deals and trade-credit decisions were falsely attributed to her in order to pressure her over shares and control.

These are Bose’s allegations. They remain exactly that. Kapoor called them completely baseless, untrue and malicious, and said he had cooperated with the board investigation that resulted in her termination. Vaidya described them as an afterthought designed to damage his reputation. No charge sheet, arrest, trial verdict or judicial finding on the merits of the FIR has been publicly reported through mid-2026. A Delhi court order in June 2026 still referred to Bose as the complainant in the Mumbai FIR while granting her interim protection against certain publications that treated unresolved matters as proven criminal liability on her part.

Parallel Proceedings

In November 2025 the Directorate General of GST Intelligence filed a criminal complaint (SS Case No. 155/2025) against Ankiti Bose, Zilingo Global Pvt. Ltd. and others before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate, Esplanade Court, Mumbai. The complaint invokes provisions of the CGST Act relating to issuance of invoices without supply of goods or services, availment or utilisation of fake input tax credit, falsification or destruction of accounts, and corporate liability. The court took cognisance and issued summons. No arrest has been reported.

Separately, Bose has pursued civil defamation actions. She obtained interim relief from the Bombay High Court in 2023 concerning an Outlook Business article and further interim protection from a Delhi court in June 2026. Those orders restrain certain publications; they do not decide the underlying corporate or criminal disputes.

The Questions That Remain Open

Any rigorous examination of this record must ask the following:

Why was there no formal sexual-harassment complaint to the board or to any authority before the financial investigation began? Why were the harassment issues formally placed before the board only after suspension? Why did a criminal FIR alleging sexual harassment and stalking wait almost 23 months after termination? Why was the complaint filed in India rather than Singapore, the jurisdiction in which Bose lived and worked throughout the relevant period? Why has the Deloitte investigation into the harassment complaints never been disclosed? What contemporaneous evidence exists of the alleged March 2021 demand for sexual favours, the fake accounts, or the claimed threats? Why does the public record still contain no charge sheet, closure report or judicial determination on the FIR more than two years after its registration?

These are not rhetorical flourishes. They are the direct consequences of the documented chronology. Bose maintains she was the victim of a conflicted process, denied access to evidence, and subjected to genuine harassment and intimidation. Kapoor and Vaidya maintain the criminal complaint is a retaliatory afterthought. The company that employed them no longer exists. The forensic reports remain private. The criminal case remains unadjudicated.

What the Record Actually Shows

Zilingo suffered a catastrophic failure of financial controls, delayed audits, conflicting revenue figures, questioned vendor payments, lender default and eventual liquidation. The board had substantial grounds to investigate and to remove its CEO. The public record does not establish that Bose personally received the questioned payments or was judicially found guilty of fraud. It also does not establish that Kapoor or Vaidya committed the sexual offences alleged in the 2024 FIR.

What the record does establish is a clear temporal order: financial investigation and suspension first; formal harassment complaints after; criminal sexual-harassment FIR almost two years later; and a parallel GST criminal complaint against Bose herself in 2025. That order is not neutral. It is the fact that any honest account of this dispute must place at the centre.

Until the Mumbai investigation produces a charge sheet or a closure report, until the GST proceedings reach a conclusion, and until the full contents of the Kroll and Deloitte reports (if they are ever released) can be examined, the public is left with precisely what it has today: serious corporate collapse, serious unproven allegations in both directions, a two-year silence that has never been satisfactorily explained by contemporaneous formal action, and a set of questions that Ankiti Bose, Dhruv Kapoor and Aadi Vaidya have still not answered under oath in a criminal court.