Weeks after billionaire tech entrepreneur Prasanna Sankar accused his estranged wife of harassment in a bitter divorce and custody battle, his wife Dhivya Sashidhar has fired back with explosive allegations of her own — including claims that Sankar solicited sex workers and pressured her into accepting an open marriage.
Sankar, co-founder of HR-tech unicorn Rippling and worth $1.3 billion according to Forbes, made headlines recently when he claimed on social media that he was "on the run" from Chennai police, alleging that law enforcement had been illegally tracking his location and digital activity after his wife filed a complaint accusing him of "kidnapping" their son.
He also claimed she had engaged in an extramarital affair, while he was fighting for custody.
But Sashidhar’s account tells a very different story — one of alleged emotional abuse, coercion, surveillance, and financial manipulation.
In an interview with The San Francisco Standard, she alleged that Sankar installed hidden cameras in their home, forced her into "painful sex" post-childbirth, solicited escorts, and dragged her and their son from country to country to shield his vast wealth from taxes.
She supported her claims with hundreds of pages of court filings, emails, and photographs submitted during their international custody battle.
“The Worst Nightmare of My Life”
Sashidhar described her experience with Sankar as “the worst nightmare of my life,” alleging that he coerced her into sex soon after childbirth in 2016, telling her it was a “primal need” for men.
“He told me, ‘Sex is a primal need. You have to do it. It doesn’t matter how much pain you’re in.’ And if I refused, he’d threaten to get it elsewhere,” she said.
In one December 2019 email, Sankar admitted to reaching out to several escorts for photos and rates before backing out.
“I’m super sorry for the stress this put on our marriage. I promise to never put our marriage in this position again,” he wrote. In another email that same day, he proposed the idea of an open marriage.
Responding to The San Francisco Standard, Sankar said the marriage was “sexless” at the time and that he had only “discussed” the idea of open marriage “in a moment of anger.”
“We agreed not to do it,” he said.
Their Relationship Timeline
The couple met in 2007, began dating in 2009, and maintained a long-distance relationship for years. While Sankar worked in Silicon Valley building a short-lived social media platform, Sashidhar pursued higher education at the University of Cambridge and later worked for Shell in the Netherlands.
In 2015, Sankar joined a healthcare startup in San Francisco as Director of Engineering. He co-founded Rippling in 2017. By 2022, his stake in the company had made him a billionaire.
While praised in tech circles as a “coding genius,” Sashidhar described him as emotionally absent and neglectful at home, testifying that he spent little time with the family but consistently demanded sex.
Allegations of Tax Avoidance and Financial Control
In 2020, Sankar moved the family to Washington state, allegedly to avoid California income taxes on the significant Rippling shares he was expecting to vest.
Sashidhar, then working at Microsoft, claimed that he frequently pressured her to take time off work to have sex.
Two years later, they relocated to Singapore, where Sankar allegedly attempted to route assets offshore. She testified that he changed his visa status to avoid paying exit tax on unrealized gains from his company stock.
Once in Singapore, Sashidhar lost her job and was unable to work on a dependent visa.
According to her, Sankar repeatedly reminded her that she was entitled to none of his wealth and fell into a lifestyle of “high-society hedonism,” allegedly engaging with sex workers and pressuring her to sleep with his friends — something she says she refused.
“That’s when our marriage completely broke down,” she told the publication.
Sankar’s Version of Events
Sankar, meanwhile, has alleged that his wife was having an affair and that their divorce negotiations soured over settlement terms.
He claimed she abducted their son to the U.S., prompting him to file an international child abduction case, which he says he won in U.S. court.
Under the agreement reached, Sankar was to pay Sashidhar around ₹9 crore plus ₹4.3 lakh per month, while sharing joint custody of their son.
Later, at Sashidhar’s request, he agreed to travel to Chennai to resume shared custody. However, tensions flared when she allegedly refused to deposit their son’s passport in a shared locker, as per their agreement.
Sankar says he filed a legal case to enforce the agreement, but his wife skipped the hearing and instead filed a police complaint against him. Fearing arrest, he fled with their son as the police arrived at his residence.
He claims he later showed the police proof that his son was “safe and happy”, but the authorities continued to pursue him.
