Yogendra Vasupal, the jailed co-founder & CEO of the now- defunct home-stay start-up Stayzilla, on Friday moved the principal session court, in Chennai with an appeal for bail. Appealing against an order of a lower court (the special metropolitan magistrate court) which on Thursday dismissed Vasupal’s bail petition, he prayed for early grant of bail. The special metropolitan court had rejected the bail application saying that the police required to get his custody first and sent him to a day’s Central Crime Branch (CCB) police remand. The policy custody ended by Friday evening. He was arrested by the Central Crime Branch (CCB) police of the state on March 14 on charges of cheating and criminal intimidation, based on a complaint filed by C S Aditya of Jigsaw Advertising.
Vasupal maintained that the criminal charges foisted against him were part of pressure tactics to settle a civil dispute. However, Aditya charged that that Stayzilla had allegedly failed to make payments for services rendered since February 2016 and has pending payments to the tune of R1.7 crore.
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Based on Aditya’s complaint, CCB registered a case against Vasupal and his partner Sarjit Singhi for offences under Sections 406 (Punishment for criminal breach of trust), 420 (Cheating), 506 (i) (Criminal Intimidation) of the IPC. Since then, Vasupal has been in the Puzhal jail in Chennai.
In a blogpost, the family of Vasupal termed the entire episode a game of character assassination. “All Yogi wanted was a complete restructuring (reboot) of Stayzilla and had begun discussions with prospects in the accommodation and tourism space. He even attended a travel summit in Delhi in the second week of March to begin his discussions on the reboot. He was in the process of liquidation of assets that were not generating revenue and focus on vehicles which had a good opportunity in the current system. Company was also in the parallel process of collection from debtors and other pay offs,” the post said.
The arrest of Vasupal saw the start-up community and veterans in the information technology sector throwing weight behind the troubled founder and seeking justice for him. Several industry bodies too joined the save Vasupal chorus.
Appealing for expedited release of Stayzilla founder, Kris Gopalakrishnan, chairman, CII Start-up Council, A Didar Singh, secretary general, Ficci, Ravi Gururaj, member executive council and chair product council, Nasscom and Sharad Sharma, co-founder and member governing council, iSPIRT, among others, had put out a joint statement late Wednesday, on help-yogi.com, ostensibly to drum up support for the cause of start-up of eco-system.