 "Man Accused of Leaving Unpaid Bill of Rs 58 Lakh at Delhi Five-Star Hotel")
A five-star hotel in Delhi has accused a man of residing in one of its rooms for two years while not paying a single penny.
An FIR was recently filed by Roseate House, a renowned five-star hotel close to Indira Gandhi International Airport, in which it claimed to have sustained a loss of Rs 58 lakh.
The man, identified as Ankush Dutta, stayed for 603 days which cost Rs 58 lakh but checked out without paying anything, alleged the FIR lodged recently by Vinod Malhotra, an authorised representative of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited, which operates Roseate.
A hotel employee has also been charged with fraud by the establishment. According to the allegations, the hotel said that Prem Prakash, head of the Front Office Department, had permitted Dutta's prolonged stay in violation of hotel policies.
It said that Prakash was authorised to decide room rates and had access to the hotel's computer system, which allowed him to monitor the balance owed by each visitor.
The hotel's management further claimed that Prakash may have received money from Dutta in exchange for allowing him to stay longer than permitted.
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How did it all start?
Dutta made a reservation for a room at the Roseate House for one night on May 30, 2019. He was supposed to leave on May 31 but kept extending his stay till January 22, 2021.
Dutta allegedly resorted to various tricks to extend his stay in the hotel. He paid three cheques of Rs 10 lakh, Rs 7 lakh and Rs 20 lakh at different dates but all of them bounced.
He even faked an account, in order to claim that other visitors who stayed at the hotel had paid for Dutta, a claim that turned out to be false.
According to the hotel policies, if a guest's pending outstanding dues exceed 72 hours, it should be brought to the attention of the CEO and Financial Controller for their information and instruction. However, Prakash did not inform these officials of Dutta's pending dues.
'False pending bills created'
Prakash also failed to submit any outstanding payment reports between May 30, 2019 and October 25, 2019. Even after October 25, when he created the outstanding payment report, he forged it by combining the pending bills of other unrelated guests into one bill in order to conceal Dutta's pending dues, said the FIR.
"The scrutiny of record of the alleged officials of the hotel revealed that they created several fake and false pending bills to benefit Ankush Dutta by adopting various ways like by removing room nights from his bills, transferring his debits into the bills of other guests' bills, using settled bills of other guests by incorporating his name in the bill, etc," the FIR added.
Meanwhile, the hotel has demanded that the perpetrators face strict legal action as "they have committed criminal offences, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery, and falsification of accounts."
A preliminary inquiry by the IGI police showed that prima facie the offences were made out, and now they are further probing the matter.
