How India's biggest media group changed hands through a jail sentence
In 1947 the industrialist Ramkrishna Dalmia took over Bennett, Coleman and Co., owner of The Times of India, using money moved from a bank and an insurer he chaired. A parliamentary exposé landed him in prison, his son-in-law ran the company meanwhile, and on Dalmia's release refused to hand it back.
The group's flagship began on 3 November 1838 as the Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce, a twice-weekly paper that went daily in 1850. After a merger in 1859 under editor Robert Knight, it adopted the broader title The Times of India in 1861. In 1892 the English journalist Thomas Jewell Bennett and Frank Morris Coleman bought it through their new joint stock company, which still carries their names. Coleman later drowned when the SS Persia sank in 1915. The paper then employed about 800 people.
British ownership ended in 1946 when Dalmia took over. In December 1955 the parliamentarian Feroze Gandhi, son-in-law of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, laid out in detail the fund transfers and intermediaries behind the takeover, and the Vivian Bose Commission investigated. Dalmia was sentenced to two years in Tihar Jail, though he spent most of it in hospital. Sahu Shanti Prasad Jain, who had been running the business, rebuffed him afterwards and later bought the company, which his family has controlled ever since.
The press once published a string of celebrated magazines, including the Illustrated Weekly of India and the Hindi weekly Dharmyug, edited by writers such as Khushwant Singh, but financial trouble closed most of them in the 1990s. Brothers Samir and Vineet Jain are credited with restoring the group's fortunes through newer ventures.
Today the Mumbai-based conglomerate owns The Times of India, which at 2.8 million copies outsells every other English-language daily on the planet, along with the Times Now television channel, the Radio Mirchi FM network and the magazines Filmfare and Femina. In May 2023 the brothers split the business, Vineet keeping radio and broadcasting and Samir the print titles.
Source: The Times Group
