Gujarat’s CID Crime unit has registered a fresh case against the directors of Osia Hyper Retail Limited, the Ahmedabad-based supermarket chain whose stores began shutting earlier this year. The complaint, reported by DeshGujarat, covers roughly Rs 16 crore of goods taken on credit and names director Dhirendra Chopra, Kavita Chopra and procurement officer Ruchi Rajkumar Baheti under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The same report says more than 250 traders have now filed claims of over Rs 250 crore before the National Company Law Tribunal.
This is the second criminal case on the same pattern. In July, the CID booked the same three people over Rs 4.7 crore after an FMCG distributor from Ahmedabad said his firm was owed Rs 1.9 crore and that twelve other distributors were waiting on another Rs 2.7 crore. According to that FIR, payments stopped after July 2025, a promised property transfer never happened, and fifty post-dated cheques of Rs 2 lakh each were handed over instead. The FIR also alleges the directors have left the country.
How a listed chain got here
Osia was not a corner shop. The company listed on the NSE SME platform, ran 43 stores across about 8 lakh square feet by 2023 and announced a Dubai expansion that year, as Business of Food recorded. Three years on, the NCLT’s Ahmedabad bench admitted it into the corporate insolvency resolution process on 28 April 2026, on a Section 7 petition by Aphelion Finance over a default of about Rs 6.72 crore. Insolvency notices went up outside stores across Gujarat and the shutters followed.
The tribunal has since reached past the company. On 6 June 2026 it admitted a personal insolvency petition against Kavita Dhirendra Chopra as a personal guarantor, on a plea by Unity Small Finance Bank over a default of Rs 10.03 crore, and imposed a 180-day moratorium, according to LiveLawBiz.
Why the number keeps growing
Rs 6.72 crore, then Rs 16 crore, then Rs 250 crore. The spread is not a contradiction. The insolvency petition that opened the case measured one lender’s default. The criminal cases measure whatever a particular set of complainants can document. The Rs 250 crore is what suppliers themselves have claimed to the resolution professional, which is the only figure that tries to count everyone at once, and it will be tested before any of it is admitted.
What sits underneath all three numbers is trade credit. A supermarket chain of that size buys biscuits, detergent and cooking oil from hundreds of distributors on 30 to 60 day terms, and each of those distributors is a small Gujarat business carrying that exposure on its own working capital. The chain’s shelves are, in effect, financed by its suppliers. When the payments stop, the loss lands on a few hundred family firms across Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara before any bank notices.
What it means for suppliers
Distributors watching this should understand where they stand in the queue. Under the insolvency code, unsecured operational creditors, which is what a supplier of goods is, rank below secured lenders and financial creditors when the money is distributed. Historically that has meant recoveries in the single digits as a share of the claim once a company is being liquidated rather than revived. Filing a claim with the resolution professional in the prescribed form, with invoices and delivery proof attached, is still the step that preserves whatever recovery exists.
The criminal FIRs run on a separate track and serve a different purpose. A cheating case can lead to arrest, attachment of property and pressure on the accused. It does not pay a distributor’s overdue invoice, and it is slower than the insolvency clock.
What to watch
Three things will decide how this ends for Gujarat’s distribution trade. Whether a resolution applicant shows up for a chain whose stores are shut and whose brand is damaged, which determines if there is anything to distribute at all. Whether the CID can locate directors it says are abroad. And whether the Federation of Gujarat FMCG Distributors, which has been counting the damage since the closures began, can turn this into tighter credit discipline across the state’s supply chains, so the next expanding retailer buys on shorter terms and better security.
For a state that runs on wholesale trade and personal credit lines, that last one matters more than the recovery percentage.
Sources: DeshGujarat, LiveLawBiz, Business of Food
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.