“I am legally prohibited from leaving the UK… the Indian government has been grossly unjust to me.”
- Vijay Mallya
For all who say I am a bhagoda refusing to come to India, please be aware that I have been a permanent resident of the United Kingdom since 1992 and am currently legally prohibited from leaving this country. All this started with poster boy actions by the Government of India who…
We are all villains in someone’s story. They might call you a fraudster, a cheater, or the ultimate red flag. There are few things more difficult to maintain than a reputation. And Vijay Mallya knows that better than most.
The businessman, who left India, is back on social media to challenge the label that has been dogging him for years: bhagoda (fugitive, absconder or deserter).
Bitten by nostalgia for his home country, he opens up.
He really wants to come home, he says. It is not that he has decided against returning to India. Unfortunately, he cannot leave the UK; according to him, he is legally barred from travelling to India. And, in his telling, the bigger injustice is not his absence, but the way he continues to be described — as a fraudster.
He has ‘facts’, he tweeted.
He says banks and the government have already recovered more than Rs 14,000 crore from him. He argues that he had a valid reason for not paying his Kingfisher employees: the Enforcement Directorate attached his assets and funds.
But really?
In the digital era, with social media at everyone's fingertips, the audacity to bring up new numbers and expect the world to forget the past and move on is quite the red flag, says the comment section.
Apparently, the rich have got problems…!
Then there is the government, which is apparently not ready to move on.
In October 2025, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary told the Lok Sabha that 15 individuals had been declared Fugitive Economic Offenders (FEOs) under the Fugitive Economic Offenders Act, 2018. The list included several high-profile names, including Vijay Mallya and Nirav Modi.
Mallya now claims that his continued stay in the UK is the result of a legal ban preventing him from travelling to India.
The Bombay High Court, too, has had a problem with him over his failure to submit to its jurisdiction.
So, as they say, there are multiple perspectives to every story. Here, we have some tweets that appeared overnight, all of a sudden, and a government that keeps looking for the fraudsters who, apparently, skipped the main part of the story.
For years, the story was about unpaid loans.
Now, it is also about unpaid adjectives - the heart-wrenching story of being portrayed as a ‘red flag’.
Reputation Status: Not Settled.
Refund Status: Under Dispute.
Last Seen: September 9, 2026.