Sridhar Vembu divorce case: Zoho co-founder’s estranged wife approaches Madras High Court to record his testimony

Global technology firm Zoho co-founder Sridhar Vembu’s estranged wife Pramila Srinivasan has approached the Madras High Court with a plea to honour a Letters Rogatory (a request for international judicial assistance) issued by the Superior Court of California in the United States, where a divorce case between the couple was pending, for recording the evidence of witnesses residing in India.

Justice P. Dhanabal has directed the High Court Registry to issue notice, returnable by February 23, 2026 to Mr. Vembu, who had shifted his residence from Pleasonton in California to Tenkasi at Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu. The notice has been ordered to be issued in all three applications filed by Ms. Srinivasan with separate but interconnected prayers related to the Letters Rogatory.

In her first application, Ms. Srinivasan urged the High Court to appoint either a senior advocate or a retired judge as a local commissioner to record the testimonies of nine individuals including Mr. Vembu and his relatives, whom she had arrayed as respondents/witnesses, as well as that of Zoho Corporation Private Limited based at Estancia IT park at Vallancherry in Chengalpattu district.

The applicant said, the Superior Court of California had passed an order on October 2, 2025 for recording the testimonies of the witnesses on oath and also permitted collection of relevant documents from them. She said, the Letters Rogatory too had been issued for that purpose since all those witnesses were residing outside the territorial jurisdiction of the American court.

In her second application, Ms. Srinivasan urged the High Court to confer special powers upon the local commissioner so that he/she could summon all nine individuals as well as the authorised person representing Zoho Corporation, administer oath to them and record their testimony as per the California Code of Civil Procedure and also the Indian laws besides directing them to produce the relevant documents.

The applicant insisted that her counsel from the United States must also be allowed to examine or cross examine the witnesses, through video conferencing, in the presence of the local commissioner and insisted that the depositions must be recorded verbatim in writing. She wanted the local commissioner to record the testimony, collect relevant documents and also other evidences related to her case.

The third application had been filed seeking a direction to the local commissioner to transmit his/her report along with the recorded testimony, documents, evidence and any other material or information collected during the proceedings directly to the Superior Court of California’s address mentioned in the Letters Rogatory. She insisted that those materials should be sent in a sealed cover.

Letters Rogatory

It is common for courts across the globe to issue Letters Rogatory to each other seeking judicial assistance. In 2025, the Madras High Court had rejected a Letters Rogatory issued by the district court of Delaware in the United States for securing oral and documentary evidence from a Chengalpattu-based pharmaceutical company in connection with a patent dispute between Pfizer and Cipla.

In that case, allowing an appeal preferred against a single judge’s order, a Division Bench of Justices G. Jayachandran and Mummineni Sudheer Kumar of the High Court held that the Letters Rogatory issued by the U.S. court on May 13, 2024 could not be honoured since Article 23 of the Hague Convention permits signatory countries to refuse requests that were in the nature of pre-trial discovery of evidence.