A five-star hotel in Delhi has recently reported a significant loss of ₹58 lakh as caused due to an alleged collusion between one of their guests and certain hotel staff members. The guest stayed in the hotel for almost two years without making any payment.
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 filed First Information Report (FIR) by Vinod Malhotra, the authorised representative of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited, Ankush Dutta stayed for an astonishing 603 days without making a single payment.
It is claimed that Prem Prakash, the head of the Front Office Department, granted permission for this extended stay, disregarding the hotel’s established norms. The hotel management suspects that Prakash may have received illicit cash from Dutta in exchange for manipulating the hotel’s internal software system, which tracks guest stays and financial 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.
Dutta allegedly checked in on May 30, 2019, for one night but extended his stay until January 22, 2021. The hotel policy requires notifying the CEO and FC if a guest’s dues exceed 72 hours. Prakash failed to inform them about Dutta’s outstanding balance.
According to the FIR, Prakash forged an outstanding payment report by combining unrelated guests’ bills to hide Dutta’s pending dues. Prakash also manipulated the accounts to falsely show that other guests had paid for Dutta’s expenses, which turned out to be fabricated. The hotel accuses him of facilitating Dutta’s extended stay through deceptive means.
“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 Dutta paid three cheques of ₹10 lakh, ₹7 lakh and ₹20 lakh at different dates but all of them bounced and Prakash didn’t bring this fact to the notice of the hotel management.
The hotel has demanded a 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 out, and now they are further probing the matter.
(With agency inputs)
