Mumbai hotelier faked robbery to avoid paying salaries,arrested

The Mumbai crime branch officials said they began investigating Kritsh Piplani’s story after finding it suspicious.

A 43-year-old hotelier was arrested by the Mumbai crime branch on Monday for faking a robbery in 2019 with the intention to not pay salary to his employees. Kritesh Piplani, owner of well-known hotels located in Mumbai’s Chandivali and Powai area, was arrested on the basis of his phone call records, said police.

Piplani told Mumbai police that he was kidnapped on November 28, 2019 when on the way to withdraw money from an ATM kiosk in Powai. (Shutterstock Image)

Piplani told police that he was kidnapped on November 28, 2019 when on the way to withdraw money from an ATM kiosk at Powai to pay his staff. He claimed two men in a Maruti Eco car pulled him in, and when he regained consciousness on the roadside at Aarey Milk Colony, he found the ₹60,000 he was carrying was gone.

The crime branch officials said they began investigating after finding his story suspicious. The CCTV recordings near the ATM kiosk in Powai and at Aarey Milk Colony, along with Piplani’s call data records, suggested the alleged incident never happened; making the police charge him with faking the robbery.

“Piplani then confessed that he wanted to escape paying salaries to his hotel employees and had come up with this plan to fake the robbery,” said a crime branch officer from unit 10. Piplani has now been handed over to Powai police for further investigation.