A five-star hotel in Delhi has alleged that it suffered a loss of ₹ 58 lakhs after a man conspired with an employee and stayed there for two years without footing the bill.
In its complaint lodged at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) police station near which the hotel, Roseate House, is located, the hotel alleges that the man, Ankush Dutta stayed for 603 days without paying any dues. The First Information Report (FIR) was filed by Vinod Malhotra on behalf of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited.
The FIR states that Prem Prakash, the head of the Front Office Department, was granted permission for this extended stay, in complete violation of the hotel’s established norms. Ankush Dutta checked out without paying a single rupee. The accused allegedly checked in on May 30, 2019, for a night and went on to extend his stay until January 22, 2021. The FIR alleges that Prem Prakash had the responsibility of deciding room rates and could track the dues of all guests through the hotel computer system, but allowed Dutta’s long stay, violating the hotel norms.
The management of the hotel is of the view that Prakash may have received some cash in place of his extended stay and manipulated the hotel’s in-house software system that maintains and monitors guest visits and their accounts.
The hotel rule is that the CEO and Financial Controller have to be informed if guest dues exceed 72 hours. Prem Prakash, however, did not inform the hotel management of Dutta’s failure in paying his dues.
The police complaint alleges Prakash didn’t make any outstanding payment reports from May 30, 2019, to October 25, 2021, ostensibly to hide that Dutta had not paid his bills. The report on outstanding bills he created after October 25 was forged by clubbing pending bills of other unrelated guests into one bill. Not only this, he manipulated the accounts to make it seem that other guests had paid for Dutta.
“The scrutiny of the 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 as 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 said.
The Roseate also observed that Dutta paid three cheques of ₹ 10 lakhs, ₹ 7 lakhs, and ₹ 20 lakhs on different dates, but all of them bounced and the Front Office Department head didn’t bring this fact to the notice of the hotel management.
The hotel has demanded strict legal action against Dutta, Prakash, and others involved for alleged “criminal offenses, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery and falsification of accounts”. The IGI Police believes a prima facie case is made out against Dutta and is probing the matter.
