Businessman Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher House was sold to Hyderabad based Saturn Realtors.

The property at Vile Parle in Mumbai sold ₹52.25 crore in the ninth attempt by the Debt Recovery Tribunal.

The deal was registered on July 31 last month. Saturn Realtors paid ₹2.612 crore as stamp duty to Maharashtra government for the same.

The property spanning 2401.70 square metres close to the Mumbai airport has been on the market since 2016. Although the initial asking was ₹135 crore, The Debt Recovery Tribunal, Bengaluru had to settle for a fraction of the price.

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Kingfisher House was once the headquarters of the now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines owned by Mallya, who is accused of fraud and money laundering amounting to around ₹9,000 crore.

Pankaj Kapoor, managing director, Liases Foras, a real estate research firm attributed the disinterest and therefore the plummeting of the price of the property to location and market condition. “There is not much development potential in this plot due to height restrictions as it is close to the airport. In addition, market conditions are bad,” said Kapoor.

The company formerly headquartered at the property in question and had to halt operations on October 20, 2012, owing to a financial crisis.

Mallya is accused of fraud and money laundering involving Kingfisher Airlines. He was declared a fugitive economic offender for defaulting on loans and for allegedly defrauding banks.

Mallya soon fled to the United Kingdom where he has been fighting on multiple fronts to avoid extradition to India. He has been on bail in the UK on an extradition warrant since his arrest in April 2019.

A British court on Monday granted a bankruptcy order against Vijay Mallya, paving the way for Indian banks, led by the State Bank of India (SBI), to pursue a worldwide freezing order and seek repayment of debt owed by the now-defunct airline.

The 65-year-old businessman, meanwhile, remains on bail in the UK while a ‘confidential’ legal matter, believed to be related to an asylum application, is resolved in connection with the unrelated extradition proceedings.

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