Man stays at 5-star hotel in Delhi for 2 years without paying a single penny!

In an unbelievable news, a five-star hotel in Delhi has accused a man of staying in one of its room for two years that too without paying a single penny!Roseate House, a prestigious five-star hotel located near the Indira Gandhi International Airport, has now filed an FIR in which it claimed to have have suffered 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.

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.

According to the hotel management, Prakash might have received some cash amount from 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.

As pr the Roseate House, 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.

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. As per the hotel, he even fudged the account to show that other guests, who stayed in the hotel, paid for Dutta which turned out to be fabricated.

As per hotel’s rules, 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.

According to the FIR, 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.

“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 probing the matter.