Delhi five-star hotel suffers loss: A five-star hotel in the national capital has alleged that it suffered a loss of over Rs 50 lakh after one of its guests stayed for over 600 days and checked out without paying a single penny.
The hotel, Roseate House in Aerocity near the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, alleged in the complaint filed at the IGI Airport police station that the guest, identified as Ankush Dutta stayed for 603 days which cost Rs 58 lakh, colluded with one of the hotel staff.
According to an FIR lodged by Vinod Malhotra, an authorised representative of Bird Airports Hotel Private Limited, which operates Roseate, the head of the Front Office Department of the hotel identified as Prem Prakash who had access to the hotel computer system to keep check of the guests' dues allowed Dutta to violate the hotel norms by staying long without making the payments.
The hotel management raised suspicion that Dutta might have lured Prakash with some cash amount for letting him stay for this long by manipulating its in-house software system which monitors the visits of the guests.
“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's check-in date and hotel norms
The hotel alleged that Dutta had checked into the hotel on May 30, 2019, and had booked a room for a night, adding that he was supposed to check-out the next day on May 31, however, he continued to postpone his check-out date till January 22, 2021.
The hotel norm says that if a guest's pending dues exceed 72 hours, the matter has to be brought to the notice of the Financial Controller and CEO. On the contrary, Prakash did not send any information to the higher authorities.
The FIR said that Prakash did not make outstanding payments 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.
How did Prakash help Dutta
The hotel alleged that its staff Prakash adopted numerous modus operandi to aid Dutta in his long stay. Prakash tampered with the account and showed that other guests who stayed at the hotel made payments for Dutta. Prakash's information turned out to be fabricated.
“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 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 demanded strict legal action against the culprits as “they have committed criminal offences, criminal breach of trust, cheating, forgery and falsification of accounts”.
The initial probe by the IGI police showed that prima facie the offences were made.
Further probe into the matter is underway.
(With PTI inputs)
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