Once a $4-bn conglomerate, the Avantha Group is under financial stress

Till the 1990s, the Thapars, who had settled in Delhi, featured among the Top 10 business groups in the country

In the days after Partition, when Kolkata (then Calcutta) witnessed bloody riots, Karam Chand Thapar’s daughter flew in from the US and landed at the Dum Dum airport. The story goes that the chairman of the Thapar Group had warned his daughter not to step out of the airport till he came to fetch her. A few hours later, he came to pick her up in a bus, along with a group of men armed with swords. Before leaving the airport, he is said to have told his daughter: “If anything happens, I will shoot you. Are you prepared for