Court Rejects Bail Plea Of Stayzilla CEO Yogendra Vasupal

The Special Metropolitan Magistrate court for CCB-CBCID has dismissed the bail plea of  Yogendra Vasupal, CEO and co-founder of homestay network Stayzilla.

The Court has also granted one day custody to the Central Crime Branch (CCB) in connection with the case, as per a report by The Hindu.

Judge MM Kabir denied the bail plea stating,”Since a police custody application is pending, bail cannot be given at this moment.”The verdict comes after Yogendra has been in judicial custody for nine days, in an alleged case of cheating an offline marketing vendor. He was arrested on fraud charges by the Chennai police on March 14, 2017.

The team included Assistant Commissioner of Police S Muthuvel Pandi and Inspector Anand Babu of the entrustment fraud wing of the Central City Crime branch. Reports reveal that Yogendra has been brought up on charges of fraud to the tune of INR 1.72 Cr by JigSaw Advertising Agency.

A Medium blogpost, written by Yogendra appeared hours after his arrest, as a cry for help from a founder who claimed to have been wrongfully arrested. The blog highlighted how Stayzilla founders were threatened by their landlord, vendors for money and payback.

The incident, amidst accusations of wrongful arrest, sparked a sense of agitation and revolt in the Indian startup ecosystem. In order to fast forward the process, a website by the name of ‘Help Yogi’ was created by industry headliners to gain support from the startup community.

Also, an open letter was sent to the Home Minister Rajnath Singh; Nirmala Sitharaman, Minister of State for Commerce and Industry; Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog; Edappadi K. Palaniswami, Chief Minister, Tamil Nadu; Rajiv Mehrishi, Home Secretary, Ministry of Home Affairs; Ramesh Abhishek, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion demanding Yogi’s immediate release and highlighting the issue.

Over 170 leading startup stalwarts including Paytm CEO Vijay Shekhar Sharma, Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal, Mohandas Pai of 3one4 Capital came forward and signed the online petition to support Yogendra.

This story is still developing.