Three Indian-origin women among America's richest self-made women: Forbes
New York, Jun 7: Three Indian-origin women have been named by Forbes among America's 80 richest self-made women, the "ceiling crashers" and "overachievers" blazing their own trails as they create new businesses and amass fortunes.
President and CEO of computer networking firm Arista Networks Jayshree Ullal, cofounder of IT consulting and outsourcing firm Syntel Neerja Sethi and CTO and cofounder of streaming data technology company Confluent Neha Narkhede are in the Forbes list of 'America's Richest Self-Made Women 2019'.
The list has been topped by Diane Hendricks, who chairs ABC Supply, one of the largest wholesale distributors of roofing, siding and windows in America. The 72-year old has a net worth of USD 7 billion.
Ullal, who has been ranked 18th in the list, has a net worth of USD 1.4 billion. The 58-year old owns about 5 per cent of Arista's stock.
"Born in London and raised in India, she is now one of America's wealthiest female executives," Forbes said.
Sethi, ranked 23rd, cofounded Syntel with her husband Bharat Desai in 1980 in their apartment in Troy, Michigan with an initial investment of just USD 2,000.
Her current net worth is one billion dollars. French IT firm Atos SE bought Syntel for USD 3.4 billion in October 2018 and Sethi, 64, got an estimated USD 510 million for her stake.
Narkhede is ranked 60th on the list with a networth of USD 360 million. Confluent, which is currently valued at USD 2.5 billion, counts Goldman Sachs, Netflix and Uber as customers.
As a LinkedIn software engineer, Narkhede, 34, helped develop Apache Kafka to handle the networking site's huge influx of data and in 2014, she and two LinkedIn colleagues founded Confluent to build tools for companies using Apache Kafka, which became open source in 2011, Forbes said.
The list also includes media mogul Oprah Winfrey ranked 10, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer (12), reality TV star Kylie Jenner (23), fashion designer Tory Burch (29), pop stars Rihanna (37) and Madonna (39), singer Beyonce (51), author Danielle Steel (56), TV show Ellen DeGeneres (63) and tennis star Serena Williams on the 80th spot.
Forbes said more women are creating new businesses and amassing fortunes than ever before, leading it to expand its ranking of the nation's wealthiest self-made women to 80 ceiling crashers, one third more than a year ago.
"Each of these overachievers has blazed her own trail," it said.
List members range in age from 21 to 92, and are worth a combined USD 81.3 billion. The minimum net worth to make Forbes' fifth annual ranking of these women is USD 225 million. A record 25 are billionaires, one more than last year. Nearly half, or 38, live in California, followed by New York with 9. Nineteen were born outside of the US, in countries spanning Burma to Barbados.
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Broken relationships don't automatically amount to abetment of suicide: SC
New Delhi (PTI): Broken relationships, while emotionally distressing, do not automatically amount to abetment of suicide in the absence of intention leading to the criminal offence, the Supreme Court on Friday said.
The observations came from a bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and Ujjal Bhuyan in a judgement, which overturned the conviction of one Kamaruddin Dastagir Sanadi by the Karnataka High Court for the offences of cheating and abetment of suicide under the IPC.
"This is a case of a broken relationship, not criminal conduct," the judgment said.
Sanadi was initially charged under Sections 417 (cheating), 306 (abetment of suicide), and 376 (rape) of the IPC.
While the trial court acquitted him of all the charges, the Karnataka High Court, on the state's appeal, convicted him of cheating and abetment of suicide, sentencing him to five years imprisonment and imposing Rs 25,000 in fine.
According to the FIR registered at the mother's instance, her 21-year-old daughter was in love with the accused for the past eight years and died by suicide in August, 2007, after he refused to keep his promise to marry.
Writing a 17-page judgement, Justice Mithal analysed the two dying declarations of the woman and noted that neither was there any allegation of a physical relationship between the couple nor there was any intentional act leading to the suicide.
The judgement therefore underlined broken relationships were emotionally distressing, but did not automatically amount to criminal offences.
"Even in cases where the victim dies by suicide, which may be as a result of cruelty meted out to her, the courts have always held that discord and differences in domestic life are quite common in society and that the commission of such an offence largely depends upon the mental state of the victim," said the apex court.
The court further said, "Surely, until and unless some guilty intention on the part of the accused is established, it is ordinarily not possible to convict him for an offence under Section 306 IPC.”
The judgement said there was no evidence to suggest that the man instigated or provoked the woman to die by suicide and underscored a mere refusal to marry, even after a long relationship, did not constitute abetment.
