Fugitive businessman Vijay Mallya has approached the Karnataka High Court, claiming that banks have already recovered the “principal debt amount multiple times” in the Kingfisher Airlines loan default case. In his petition, Mallya has asked the banks to provide an account statement showing the total amount they have recovered from him.
Justice R Devdas has issued notices to 10 banks, including the State Bank of India (SBI) and Punjab National Bank, as well as a recovery official and an asset reconstruction company involved in the case.
Mallya’s lawyer, senior advocate Sajan Poovayya, argued that while Kingfisher Airlines owed around Rs 6,200 crore in debt, a total of Rs 14,000 crore has already been recovered by the banks. Poovayya pointed to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s statement in the Lok Sabha and said that a loan recovery officer had mentioned that Rs 10,200 crore had already been recovered.
Despite this, the recovery process is still continuing, even though Mallya claimed that the full loan amount had been settled. He has requested an interim stay on any further recovery actions by the banks and has asked them to provide a detailed statement of all amounts owed by him and United Breweries Holdings, the parent company of Kingfisher Airlines.
In a previous statement posted on X (formerly Twitter) last year, Mallya claimed that banks had recovered more than double the Rs 6,203 crore debt, as ordered by the Debt Recovery Tribunal. He also referred to Finance Minister Sitharaman’s statement in the Lok Sabha that properties worth Rs 14,131.6 crore, owned by Mallya, had been returned to the banks.
Mallya, who fled to the UK in 2016, is currently facing charges in the IDBI Bank-Kingfisher Airlines loan fraud case, where the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has named him as a key accused. Efforts are underway to extradite Mallya back to India to stand trial.
