Man who duped Leela Palace of lakhs sent to 2-day police custody

The accused Mahamed Sharif had been arrested on January 19 from Karnataka’s Dakshina Kannada district

Delhi Police with Mahamed Sharif, who impersonated as a member of the Royal Family of UAE and duped Leela Palace Hotel. | Photo Credit: PTI

A court here on Sunday sent a man accused of duping five-star hotel Leela Palace of more than ₹23 lakh to two-day police custody.

On January 19, Delhi Police had arrested Mahamed Sharif from his home district of Dakshina Kannada in Karnataka, with the help of technical surveillance.

He allegedly posed as a functionary of the United Arab Emirates royal family and did not pay the bill, believed to be over ₹23 lakh, for his more than three-month long stay at the Leela Palace hotel in Delhi’s Chankyapuri.

During a custody hearing, Duty Magistrate Shivangi Vyas noted that the police had to recover various items, allegedly stolen from the hotel by Mr. Sharif, from his house in Delhi and granted them custody for further investigation.

As per the police, a case was registered on January 14 at Sarojini Nagar police station based on the complaint of the hotel’s general manager Anupam Das Gupta, who alleged that a guest who had stayed from August 1 to November 20 had fled without clearing a large amount of his bill.

According to the complaint, Mr. Sharif had posed as an employee in the office of Sheikh Falah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, a member of the royal family of Abu Dhabi, the capital of the UAE., and even showed the hotel staff a UAE residency card.

The hotel has also accused Mr. Sharif of stealing silverware and other expensive items from the room he was allotted.