Singapore High Court Rejects TCI Express CEO Chander Agarwal’s ₹3.5 Crore Claim From Ex Girlfriend

Chander Agarwal, CEO and Managing Director of logistics company TCI Express, had approached the Singapore High Court seeking to recover close to ₹3.5 crore he said he had spent on his former girlfriend, Felicia Lee. His case was that the money was never a gift but a set of interest-free loans she was expected to repay. Lee's case was the opposite that everything spent on her had come from love and affection, with no promise to return it.

The two met on a flight in 2019. Agarwal later found her on social media, and the two began meeting regularly. Their relationship turned romantic only in September 2022, though Agarwal had already begun spending generously on her well before that.

The spending grew into a long list of gifts and experiences, luxury shopping, first-class and suites-class flights, and expensive dinners across cities. Among the gifts named in court were a Louis Vuitton handbag, Prada vouchers and an Apple Hermes watch. Agarwal also funded a Europe trip through Barcelona, Lisbon and London, paying for accommodation and shopping along the way.

The relationship broke down in December 2023 after Agarwal came to suspect Lee of being unfaithful. What had once been ordinary spending between two people in love suddenly took on a very different character. By March 2024, Agarwal had filed a lawsuit in Singapore seeking to recover the money, putting his total claim at around SGD 468,090, more than ₹3.5 crore.

The dispute that followed was unusual because it did not turn on whether the money had been spent, that was not in question. It turned on why it had been spent. Agarwal argued that once the relationship began, the nature of his spending changed. During cross-examination, he reportedly said that "everything became a loan, everything was transactional" once the two started dating, unlike the spending before it. He also argued that Lee's acceptance of his offers to pay for things effectively converted those payments into loans she owed him.

The Singapore High Court did not agree. In a judgment delivered on September 9, the court held that most of the money in dispute had been given as gifts, not loans, and that the evidence did not support Agarwal's claim that repayment had ever been intended. The court also rejected the argument that merely accepting an offer to have money spent on oneself could, by itself, turn that spending into a debt.

Senior Judge Lee Seiu Kin observed that Agarwal had "showered her with expensive gifts" through the relationship, a pattern inconsistent with the idea of enforceable loans. The judge also noted the case appeared shaped by how the relationship ended, remarking that Agarwal seemed determined to recover a price from Lee after things fell apart.

In the end, the court dismissed Agarwal's claim entirely and ordered him to pay Lee's legal costs. The judgment made clear that the size of the spending was never in doubt, what mattered was the absence of any agreement tying the money to a promise of repayment. A relationship built on generosity, the ruling suggests, does not automatically create a debt just because the relationship later sours.

The case has drawn attention beyond Singapore, partly because of Agarwal's profile as head of a major Indian logistics company. For Lee, the ruling ends a battle that could have left her liable for a substantial sum despite having, in the court's own assessment, done nothing more than accept gifts offered freely during a relationship.