Nitin Desai Death: Police book five employees of creditor ECL Finance

Bollywood art director Nitin Desai's wife has filed a police case against five employees of creditor ECL Finance in his death case. Mr Desai's wife, Neha, in the first information report (FIR) alleged the officers of the company are responsible for causing severe mental stress to her husband.She alleged the employees of the creditor firm harassed her husband over loans, which led to his death by suicide.

ECL Finance is a non-banking finance arm of Edelweiss Group.Mr Desai had been facing mental harassment in connection with the loans his company had taken, and he died by suicide because of it, the FIR said.His company had defaulted on a Rs 252 crore loan repayment to creditors, and the Mumbai bench of the National Company Law Tribunal had started insolvency proceedings.Desai's company, ND's Art World Pvt Ltd, had borrowed Rs 185 crore through two loans from ECL Finance in 2016 and 2018, and troubles with repayments started from January 2020.

Nitin Desai was a well-known art director in Hindi cinema, who had worked with prominent filmmakers like Ashutosh Gowarikar, Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Rajkumar Hirani, and Sanjay Leela Bhansali. His last venture as an art director was Ashutosh Gowariker's Panipat, which released in 2019. Nitin established ND Studios in Maharashtra's Karjat in 2005. Some of his popular projects include Devdas (2002), Munnabhai M.B.B.S. (2003), Dostana (2008) and Mission Kashmir (2000), among many others.