FIR against OYO over ‘wrong’ GST notice of Rs 2.66 crore

In the FIR, Jain has named Oravel Stays Private Limited or OYO, as well as Ritesh Agarwal, the founder and group CEO of OYO, and several others. The FIR has been lodged against OYO for cheating, criminal breach of trust, forgery and criminal conspiracy under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

The FIR states that Samskara Resort in Jaipur provides services via online booking as well as walk-in. Jain said that an agreement was signed between Samskara and OYO on April 18, 2019, for 12 months, but OYO allegedly also showed bookings in Samskara for financial years 2018-19, 2019-20, and 2020-21.

The FIR states that between April 18, 2019 and April 20, 2020, OYO provided Samskara a business of Rs 10.95 lakh for which the GST was paid by the resort. However, OYO has allegedly shown a business of Rs 22.22 crore with Samskara, for which the GST Rs 2.66 crore GST bill is pending, apart from penalty.

Husain Khan, president of Hotel Federation of Rajasthan, alleged that about 20 hotels have received GST notices on the basis of inflated bills allegedly shown by OYO. He said that OYO has had a “poor record” with hotels and four years ago too “we had campaigned against it, with 125 hotels displaying banners outside the hotels stating that we are not accepting OYO bookings”.

An OYO spokesperson said, “This seems to be a case of GST dispute of the hotelier. He may not have paid GST on walk-in guests and is trying hard to involve OYO wrongly to deflect the matter. Our records clearly show that most of his bookings are walk-ins which his employees would have recorded directly. So, there is no basis for fake bookings. We are confident of getting the misleading FIR quashed.”

“It’s absolutely clear that the complaint is against ‘unknown person’ and not Ritesh Agarwal,” the spokesperson said.