Mumbai city police have registered a criminal complaint against former Jet Airways (JAI, Mumbai International) director Naresh Goyal and his wife Anita for allegedly deceiving the Mumbai-based travel agency Akbar Travels of India out of INR500 million rupees (USD6.9 million), the Hindustan Times has learned.
Following an order by a metropolitan magistrate issued on February 18, the police in the Mata Ramabai Ambedkar Marg area of Mumbai registered a complaint against the couple under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, the report said.
The complaint originated from Rajendran Neruparambil, the Chief Financial Officer at Akbar Travels, which is based in southern Mumbai's Crawford district.
Deputy Police Commissioner Sangramsinh Nishandar confirmed the complaint against the Goyals to the Hindustan Times. According to the text of the complaint, Akbar Travels had been doing business with Jet Airways since 1994. Still, in recent years the accused are alleged to have consistently concealed the extent of the carrier's financial crisis and assured the travel agency it would not suffer any loss.
On the assurances of the accused, the agency continued to buy and sell tickets for the airline's routes, such as that between Mumbai International and Manchester International, at a cheaper rate, but from January 2019 some flights started to be cancelled.
Akbar Travels alleges that Jet Airways continued to make assurances about its financial health while continuing to trade in tickets through the agency, despite increasing numbers of cancellations for which the money was not returned. It was merely a business deal gone wrong, a Mumbai police officer told the Hindustan Times.
Naresh and Anita Goyal stepped down from the Jet Airways board on March 25, 2019, before the airline finally suspended all operations on April 17. The company currently owes a total debt in excess of INR250 billion (USD3.5 billion), according to press reports at the end of December. On February 18, 2020, Jet Airways' committee of creditors agreed to extend the deadline for the submission of bids for the acquisition of the company to March 10.
