According to an FIR, a five-star hotel in New Delhi allegedly suffered a loss of ₹58 lakh after one of its guests enjoyed a nearly two-year-long stay in its rooms without paying any room charges, by colluding with some hotel staff.
The hotel, Roseate House in Aerocity near the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, has lodged a case at IGI Airport police station.
According to the FIR lodged recently by Vinod Malhotra, an authorised representative of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited, which operates Roseate, guest Ankush Dutta stayed for 603 days which cost ₹58 lakh, but checked out without paying a single penny. The FIR alleges that Prem Prakash, head of the hotel’s Front Office Department, who was authorised to decide room rates and had access to the hotel computer system to track dues of all guests, allowed Mr. Dutta’s long stay by violating the hotel norms.
The hotel management suspects that Mr. Prakash might have received some cash amount from Mr. Dutta for letting him overstay by manipulating its in-house software system that maintains and monitors stay/visit of guests and their accounts.
“A criminal conspiracy was hatched by guest Mr. Ankush Dutta along with some known and unknown hotel staff, including Mr. Prem Prakash with a motive to gain wrongfully and deprive the hotel of its rightful dues,” the FIR said.
“In pursuance of the said conspiracy, the alleged staff of the hotel forged, deleted, added accounts entries and falsified a large number of entries in the account of the said guest Ankush Dutta in the Opera software system of the hotel,” it added.
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The hotel has alleged that Mr. Dutta checked in on May 30, 2019 and booked a room for one night. He was supposed to check out the very next day on May 31 but he kept on extending his stay till January 22, 2021.
The hotel norm says that if a guest’s pending outstanding dues exceed 72 hours, it should be brought to the notice of CEO and Financial Controller for their information and seeking instruction. However, Mr. Prakash didn’t send Mr. Dutta’s dues to the CEO and FC of the hotel.
According to the FIR, Mr. Prakash didn’t make any outstanding payment report from May 30, 2019 to October 25, 2019. Even when he created the outstanding payment report after October 25, he forged it by clubbing pending bills of other unrelated guests into one bill with the motive to camouflage the pending dues of Mr. Dutta.
The hotel has alleged that Mr. Prakash resorted to various modus operandi to help Mr. Dutta enjoy a long stay there. He even fudged the account to show that other guests, who stayed in the hotel, paid for Mr. Dutta which turned out to be fabricated.
“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 said.
The hotel also noticed that Mr. Dutta made out three cheques of ₹10 lakh, ₹7 lakh and ₹20 lakh at different dates. All of these bounced and Mr. Prakash didn’t bring this fact to the notice of the hotel management. The hotel has demanded strict legal action against the culprits 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, and now they are further probing the matter.
