Politician friend clears Pooja Gandhi's hotel bills

It took a police complaint against Kannada actor Pooja Gandhi to force her politician friend to pay up pending hotel bills of Rs 3.5 lakh.

The actor, her politician friend Anil P Mensinkai of the BJP and a film crew had stayed at The Lalit Ashok, Kumara Krupa Road, between April 2016 and March 2017, running up a bill of Rs 26,22,344, including taxes. They paid Rs 22,83,129 intermittently between April 2016 and December 2018. When the hotel staff asked about the rest of the money, the response was evasive.

The hotel management decided to wait patiently, assuming Gandhi would be busy in her film shootings. When the hotel staff called her up, she claimed she had nothing to do with Mensinkai or the film crew who stayed in the hotel.

She asked the hotel to contact Mensinkai for the payment of the dues.

On his part, Mensinkai first wrote a cheque but backtracked later, saying there wasn’t sufficient balance in his bank account.

Frustrated by the dilatory tactics, the hotel’s security manager, C C Muthanna, filed a complaint at the High Grounds police station. Police opened a non-cognisable report but before they could take anyone’s statement, Mensinkai’s associates rushed to the hotel on Tuesday and settled the dues.

Gandhi called the complaint “bogus”.

“We have settled all the dues with the hotel and I even called up the general manager who confirmed the dues were settled. There has been some miscommunication. It’s true that our crew stayed at the hotel for the film shoot and we had a couple of events there, but the bills were duly settled and I do not know how this complaint cropped up suddenly,” she added.