Bad Times For Mallya

The investigation into the Vijay Mallya bank fraud case is back on track after PM Narendra Modi handpicks the CBI’s new SIT.

- Uday Mahurkar

It was around the beginning of July, and the CBI’s newly formed special investigating team (SIT), looking into the Vijay Mallya loan default case, were in Mumbai to meet a group of senior bank executives. These were the same officials from a bank consortium that had approved nearly ₹7,000 crore in loans to the head of the now defunct Kingfisher Airlines Ltd (KFL). For reasons best known to them, the officials were reluctant to accept that Mallya had any mala fide intentions visa-vis returning their money. For them, it was a case of “business failure”. At this point, the SIT asked them the meaning of ‘wilful defaulter’, a term the lead lender, the State Bank of India, officially used for Mallya in November 2015. The bankers had no convincing answer. Rakesh Asthana, head of the SIT, was at his wit’s end. “If a person deliberately decides to not pay back a loan, he is called a wilful defaulter. Doesn’t this amount to cheating? Why didn’t you file an FIR against Mallya?” he reportedly thundered.

He warned the bank executives of action on complicity charges if they delayed filing of a complaint any further, while lauding the way the IDBI Bank had gone about the case (it had filed charges against the fugitive businessman in July 2015). Cornered, the bank officials, led by an SBI deputy MD, said that they would hold a meeting of the consortium that had extended the loans and would come back to the CBI with their decision. An emergency meeting was held within a week and the SBI lodged an FIR against Mallya on July 27.