Vijay Mallya, who is in the United Kingdom, was accused in a bank loan default case of over Rs. 9,000 crores, involving his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.
On 9th May 2017, he was held guilty of contempt for transferring $ 40 million to his children in violation of court’s orders in a petition filed by the Consortium of Creditors (COC) led by the State Bank of India (SBI). Vijay Mallya filed a plea seeking a review of the verdict which held him guilty stating that the court had made an error in proceeding against him on the basis of an incorrect recording that a reply was not filed by Mallya in response to the banks.
The court noted that there was an error on the part of the court and said that "the concerned documents including Memo of Filing dated 30.01.2017 and copy of the reply dated 30.01.2017 were placed for our perusal. From these facts, it is clear that it was an error on part of this Court to have observed and proceeded on the premise that no reply was filed by the respondent No.3 to the response filed by the banks."
Before the judgment being reserved, the matter was about to be adjourned after which it came in light that a reply filed by Mallya could not be located in the case records of the court. On June 19 the court asked his own registry as to why the review petition filed by Mallya was not listed for the last three years.
The plea was dismissed by the bench of Justices U U Lalit and Ashok Bhushan on Monday and ordered Vijay Mallya to appear before the court on 5th October at 2:00 pm.
The court said that “In our considered view, the attempt on part of the respondent No.3 (Mallya) to have rehearing in the matter cannot be permitted nor do the submissions make out any 'error apparent on record' to justify interference in review jurisdiction.”
The bench also directed the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India to ensure the presence of Vijay Mallya before the court on the said date.
