The 14th Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court issued the NBWs on March 10 against the now defunct now-defunct Kingfisher Airline, its chairman Vijay Mallya and another senior official of the company and posted the matter for April 13.
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In an email interview published on Sunday, Mr Mallya, who owes banks almost a billion dollars granted as loans, told the Sunday Guardian that he has done no wrong and that he is being “victimized”.
“His questioning is important to throw light on various financial transactions, as many of them are in his personal domain”, said an ED official.
He said: “Kingfisher was launched on the basis of a viable business plan vetted by SBI Capital Markets and renowned worldwide aviation consultants, but despite every effort, it was an unfortunate commercial failure caused by macroeconomic factors and then government policies”.
Asked whether his starting from India on March 2 was linked to his inability to pay back loans, he said he left on a particular visit along with a friend. “India has given me everything”. “Rubbish”, Mallya, founder of the doomed Kingfisher Airlines, tweeted on Friday. Our judicial system is sound and respected.
“Though there are over 60 other major defaulters, only Mallya’s case is hogging headlines in the media”.
“So, the government is hell bent of framing the innocent and they allowed people like Vijay Mallya to leave the country”, Digvijay Singh told media here. “We will not let him off the way you let off Quattrocchi”, retorted Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi.
He also retweeted a tweet by his son Siddharth Mallya, who had said, “People don’t understand that I have nothing to do with it!” in reply to a message whether he was fed up with the Twitter backlash.
The opposition Congress Party leader Ghulam Nabi Azad on Thursday accused the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “a criminal conspiracy in letting Mallya fly out of the country”. They carry all the investigations, but do not arrest him.
The agency reported Mallya’s counsel as saying that he will move the high court to get the warrant quashed.
Overall, the department is claiming Rs. 150 crore in service tax dues from Mallya.
Now that the matter is before a Supreme Court bench, which seems genuinely disturbed at the loot of public funds, Mr Mallya’s manipulations will, hopefully, end and the SC will also be tough on the bankers who are projecting themselves as innocent victims.
The Enforcement Directorate has asked Mallya to appear before it on March 18. “They decide, we don’t”, Mallya said. The businessman’s luxury home, called “Ladywalk”, cost £11.5 million ($16.4 million) when bought in July 2015, property records show.
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Noting that security officials stated that Mallya, a feature in India’s society press pages who sports a goatee, an ear stud and a ponytail, was the subject of a “lookout notice” – an official circular that triggers an alert if the target pursues to leave India but does not provide a legal basis to prevent departure.
