In a surprising news, a man stayed at a five-star hotel for almost 2 years without making any payments after allegedly conspiring with one of its employees. Roseate House, a prestigious five-star hotel located in Aerocity near the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport in Delhi, has now filed an FIR in which it claimed to have suffered a loss of Rs 58 lakh. As per the FIR lodged by Vinod Malhotra, a representative of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited, a guest named Ankush Dutta stayed at the Roseate for 603 days and checked out without paying anything.
The hotel has alleged that 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, news agency PTI reported
The hotel has accused one of its own employees for the fraud. As per the allegations, the hotel said that its head of Front Office Department, Prem Prakash allowed Dutta's long stay violating the hotel norms. Prakash, the hotel said, was authorised to decide room rates and had access to the hotel computer system to track dues of all guests.
It is suspected that Prakash may have received some cash from Dutta for letting him overstay by manipulating the in-house software system which maintains and monitors guests’ stay or visits 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, as per PTI.
The FIR added that Prakash “forged, deleted, added accounts entries and falsified a large number of entries in the account of Ankush Dutta in the Opera software of the hotel”
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.
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, Prakash didn’t send Dutta’s dues to the CEO and FC of the hotel.
However 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 Dutta.
Roseate alleged that Prakash resorted to various modus operandi to help Dutta enjoy a long stay. He even fudged the account to show that other guests, who stayed in the hotel, paid for 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 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 investigating the matter.