The Silent Coup: How Industrialist Sanjay Kapur’s Death Sparked a Family War Over His ₹31,000 Crore Empire

When the news of Sanjay Kapur’s sudden passing reached Mumbai’s financial district late one humid evening in May, the city seemed to pause, the air thick with disbelief as whispers of a heart attack spread through the corridors of power. Sanjay, the unflappable chairman of SonaCom Star Group, had engineered a meteoric rise for the conglomerate he inherited from his father, transforming a steady, mid-tier industrial concern into a ₹31,000-crore empire straddling textiles, real estate, and renewable energy. Yet at the very moment when analysts were preparing to laud yet another quarter of record profits, Sanjay’s untimely demise thrust his sprawling business into a vortex of uncertainty and ignited the fiercest inheritance battle modern India has ever witnessed.

Born into a modest family in Pune, Sanjay had always displayed an insatiable hunger for growth that took him far from his humble beginnings, first to the hallowed halls of Mumbai’s elite business schools and then to boardrooms across the globe. By the time his father passed away in 2015, Sanjay had amassed both the vision and the ruthlessness required to steer SonaCom Star from stagnation to dizzying heights, engineering joint ventures with European textile giants, acquiring underperforming energy plants in Gujarat, and even launching an audacious bid to corner the South Asian solar panel market. His trademark calm, even in the face of fierce takeover attempts, earned him the respect of peers and the envy of rivals, while his penchant for meticulous planning came to define not only the corporation but the man himself.

Sanjay’s private life, however, was a tapestry of high-profile marriages and quieter heartbreaks, each union reflecting a pivotal chapter in his relentless quest for personal stability. His first marriage, in 2002, to Bollywood luminary Karisma Kapoor, had captivated the nation: the glamorous bride in a cascade of ivory silk, the charismatic tycoon beaming beside her, the twins—Sam and Sara—who arrived two years later and instantly became tabloid royalty. Yet as his corporate responsibilities became unyielding, the glossy veneer of their partnership cracked under the strain of endless promotional tours, late-night board meetings, and the relentless glare of the camera. When they announced their divorce in 2010, Mumbai’s social pages mourned the end of an era, but Sanjay nonetheless secured his children’s future with a sprawling Bandra flat and ₹14 crore locked away in trust bonds, pledges he would later recast as mere footnotes in the saga of his final testament.

The collapse of his second marriage a few years later to entrepreneur and philanthropist Ayesha Ahmed burned hotter and faster, punctuated by leaked emails and allegations of concealed offshore holdings. As Ayesha took to primetime talk shows to accuse Sanjay of financial subterfuge, the magnate retaliated with an aggressive counter-suit, dragging family finances into the litigation spotlight and fueling rumors that his heart was hardened against vulnerability. It was only after that storm subsided, in 2017, that Sanjay retreated from the public fray to wed Priya Sachdeva, a poised executive within his own organization whose quiet intelligence and discreet demeanor contrasted sharply with the tumult of his previous marriages. Their courtship was swift, their ceremony intimate, and for the first time, Sanjay appeared to have found the anchor his restless spirit so desperately needed.

Behind closed doors, however, Priya was more than a supportive spouse: she had become the confidante to whom Sanjay entrusted the most sensitive decisions, from the finalization of multi-billion-rupee mergers to the delicate negotiation of sibling disputes over family trusts. By the time Sanjay appointed her to the board alongside his two younger sisters, Meera and Sunita, the trio had forged an alliance both strategic and personal, united by a shared conviction that only they could safeguard Sanjay’s life’s work from the chaos of legacy litigation. Customers noticed a new steely precision in SonaCom’s public announcements, competitors glimpsed a tighter grip on corporate governance, and insiders whispered that the real power behind the throne had shifted irrevocably toward Priya—an observation soon to prove prophetic.

On the night of his death, Sanjay had presided over a lavish gala to commemorate SonaCom’s record quarterly earnings, moving among investors and dignitaries with his customary blend of warmth and authority. Cameras flashed as he raised a toast to “unprecedented growth” and “a future brighter than the sun,” but just two nights later, when his staff found him slumped in his study, unresponsive and pale, that rallying optimism turned to shock. Embalmers and beatified eulogies notwithstanding, the real drama awaited in the unassuming conference room of the Kapur family residence, where the reading of his will would upend every expectation and cleave his lineage in two.

The document itself, sprawling across 57 meticulously typed pages, read like a manifesto of control. In rigid, unambiguous prose, Sanjay decreed that every voting share of SonaCom Star Group—shares amounting to the very fulcrum of corporate power—would pass directly to Priya Sachdeva, vesting in her the exclusive authority to steer boardroom votes, approve executive appointments, and commit the company to multiyear strategies. The will further stipulated that Priya’s decisions must receive the concurrence of Meera and Sunita, effectively creating a closed circle that excluded all other blood relatives from any role in the business. His twins, Sam and Sara, would retain the trust bonds and the Bandra apartment—the very assets Sanjay had earmarked for their education and weddings—but would possess no equity, no say in strategy, no path to leadership. Young Aryan, his only child with Priya, was to inherit personal real estate holdings valued at ₹25 crore, entirely detached from the corporate apparatus. A final codicil poured the contents of offshore accounts—estimated at ₹3,500 crore—into an “Incentive and Retention Trust,” naming Priya as the sole trustee empowered to distribute funds for “business continuity,” a phrase that critics would soon mock as corporate nepotism writ large.

Silence descended upon the family as the executor’s voice echoed through the hushed room and reality sank in: Sanjay had denied his own progeny the keys to the kingdom, investing them instead in the hands of a woman they barely recognized as more than a stepmother and of two aunts whose public personas had until now remained obediently in the shadow of a titan brother. The anguish on Sam and Sara’s faces was raw; friends later recounted how Sam retreated to his room for hours, weeping until exhaustion claimed him, while Sara, normally effervescent and vivacious, refused to speak for the remainder of the weekend. Even Aryan, mere weeks from his thirteenth birthday, sensed the pregnant tension between his mother and his half-siblings, confessing to classmates that he had no idea where his place in the grand Kapur narrative truly lay.

Within twenty-four hours, Karisma Kapoor’s legal team had filed a caveat in the Bombay High Court, contesting the will on three main grounds: that Priya and Sanjay’s sisters had exerted undue influence over a man still grieving personal betrayals; that evidence of a minor stroke only two months prior called his testamentary capacity into question; and that portions of the offshore codicil bore signatures suspiciously similar to forgeries. As the lawyers squared off, Mumbai’s media landscape exploded. News channels ran continuous panels debating whether a father could legally repudiate promises made in life, social media buzzed with #JusticeForSamSara hashtags, and op-eds courted controversy by championing Priya’s right as a spouse to protect “her husband’s vision.” Court observers noted that never before had an inheritance dispute of such magnitude captured the nation’s imagination, folding together questions of familial loyalty, gender bias in corporate succession, and the sanctity of a last will.

Adding fuel to the blaze were rumors—some verified, others grotesque exaggerations—of safe-deposit boxes unsealed by court order in the hours after Sanjay’s death, their contents said to include diaries, letters, and an “anonymous confession” allegedly penned by Sanjay himself. According to sources within the executor’s office, certain entries detailed private conversations held in the final weeks of his life, in which Priya and his sisters had pressed him to revise his testamentary draft, warning that any dilution of joint decision-making power would imperil the group’s long-term stability. Whether these entries prove authentic or amount to a carefully orchestrated smear campaign, forensic handwriting experts have been summoned to examine ink composition and pen pressure, and the controversy has only ratcheted up the stakes for the upcoming injunction hearing scheduled for July.

Inside the Kapur ancestral home on Juhu Beach, relationships have frayed to the breaking point. Meera, once affectionate and maternal, now derides her nephew and niece as “opportunistic heirs who never understood the burdens of leadership,” while Sunita publicly lauds Priya as the “living embodiment of my brother’s final wishes.” In response, Karisma Kapoor has broken her silence to accuse her former husband’s family of orchestrating a cold-blooded power grab, asserting that Sam and Sara were “betrayed by the very people entrusted to uphold their father’s name.” Aryan, caught in the maelstrom, has been uprooted from school and shielded from reporters by a rotating detail of security personnel, his only solace a tightly held hand from his mother during the court hearings.

As Mumbai’s business community watches with equal parts fascination and horror, pundits debate whether this will set a precedent for future family-run conglomerates, where spouses and siblings might conspire to reengineer legacies while sidelining direct heirs. The academic world, too, has seized upon the Kapur conflict to examine the ethics of testamentary freedom versus moral obligation, questioning whether a father’s right to distribute assets can justly override the commitments he made to his children in the bloom of family unity. In editorials from Delhi to New York, commentators have speculated on the broader ramifications for women’s roles in corporate governance, with some arguing that Priya’s ascendancy could embolden more women to claim leadership in patriarchal business dynasties—even as detractors brand her rise as the triumph of manipulation over merit.

Yet perhaps the most tantalizing twist remains the unverified rumor of a fourth child, an elder son born before any of the public unions, whose existence—if proven—could instantly nullify key sections of the will and force a recalibration of all existing court filings. Priya’s legal team has dismissed this as “sheer tabloid fantasy,” but quietly ordered genealogical records and medical charts to be safeguarded in anticipation of new subpoenas, demonstrating that even the slightest possibility of another heir is taken with deadly seriousness in a conflict where billions of rupees and the very soul of a family empire hang in the balance.

With the first round of hearings just days away, every stakeholder is girding for battle. Will the High Court grant an injunction to halt Priya’s immediate takeover of SonaCom’s board? Can Sanjay’s children marshal evidence of coercion or diminished capacity? And even if they succeed, can they repair the shattered bonds of trust that once held their family together? As Mumbai braces for what promises to be a landmark legal confrontation, one truth stands out above all: in the world of Sanjay Kapur, where ambition met devotion and power collided with blood, the final act was not a testament of unity but a declaration of war—and the aftermath will reshape an industrial dynasty for generations to come.