Vijay Mallya, the 'victim': Twitter has fun after his arrest and bail

After the bail, Mallya tried to play it down, calling it 'usual Indian media hype'

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya, accused of defaulting on loans worth crores, was arrested in London on April 18 by the Scotland Yard on an extradition warrant by India. However, after just a 10-minute hearing at the Westminster Magistrates' Court, he was granted bail. A source close to Mallya said he attended a police station voluntarily and the arrest was a technical procedure. Mallya was arrested on behalf of the Indian authorities over accusations of fraud and appeared in Westminster Magistrates' Court, British police said.

It is reported that arrest came after Arun Jaitley's recent visit to the UK where Jaitley had personally appealed to UK PM Theresa May for Mallya's extradition. Last month, the British government certified India's request and sent it to a district judge for further action.

With his arrest by Scotland Yard in London, Indian government’s efforts to extradite the "King of Good Times" seems to have been getting some result. Once Mallya is extradited to India, he is likely to be arrested and would face a slew of charges.
According to a report of News Minute, in an interview with the Financial Times in April 2016, Mallya said that he has always been in dialogue with the banks. “We wish to settle. But we wish to settle at a reasonable number that we can afford and banks can justify on the basis of settlements done before,” he said. He blamed the media for 'molding' public opinion and denied all charges against him.

In June 2016 when Enforcement Directorate (ED) attached assets of over Rs 1000 crore to Mallya he said that he was aggrieved to keep reading about action government agencies are planning against him.On the Non-bailable warrant issues against him, he claimed that he never refused to appear but only sought time to sell assets to pay the employees, tax authorities and banks.

Mallya has listed his arguments to sway the public opinion in his favour and portray that he is being hunted for no adequate reasons Mallya raised several points from time to time. According to him:

a) The ED’s action of attaching his and one of his company’s assets in India in the Kingfisher case is legally not valid.

b) The ED/CBI have already been given all documents including money trail through bank accounts in the Kingfisher loan to prove that the money has been used for legitimate purposes, hence no misappropriation of the funds is done and finally.

c) He never refused to appear before the ED (but only sought time to sell his assets.

On March 7 this year, Mallya, in a tweet, blamed the Pratt & Whitney engines for the fall of Kingfisher Airlines. Later, he took to Twitter and darned media for not praising his efforts in his new Formula 1 venture after he had defaulted Rs 9,061 crores.

After SEBI barred him from trading in the securities market, he tweeted, “Before slamming me ask CBI and SEBI some tough questions on what proof or evidence they have to allege fraud."

How Mallya reacted to the news of his arrest?

After the bail, Mallya, in a message on Twitter, called the news of his arrest ‘usual Indian media hype’. If we look into the course of actions, the fall from refinement of Mallya has been spectacular. From a billionaire liquor baron to two-time Rajya Sabha MP to an absconder living in London, life has shown different phases to the UB Group chairman.

Mallya soon took to Twitter after hsi bail to congratulate West Indies cricketer Chris Gayle for reaching the 10,000 runs milestone in T20 cricket.

Here is how Twitter reacted to the arrest and subsequent bail?

Twitter was soon flooded with interesting tweets. Here is how the Twitterati is reacting: