Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@sriharikaranth
Topics: News, World News, Crime
Kit Roberts
The owner of a 'sky mansion' built on top of a skyscraper has never actually seen the building in person.
Viewed close up, the mansion looks like it would fit right in among countryside and rolling green grass.
It features a an infinity pool, a helipad and a surrounding deck, and looks every part the billionaire home it was built to be.
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The mansion is also built on top of a skyscraper, some 400ft above UB City, the business district of Bengaluru, previously called Bangalore, in India.
It really does look like someone just plonked a mansion on top of a skyscraper.
But the man who had the $20 million mansion built, businessman Vijay Mallya, has reportedly never even seen the finished structure in person.
In fact, the Indian government is reportedly trying to get him to face charges of financial crimes.
In 2016, Mallya fled India after he defaulted on debts worth more than $1 billion. He is also facing charges for fraud.
It emerged that he had been accused of defrauding a consortium of national banks, while diamond magnate Nirav Modi was accused of defrauding the state-owned Punjab National Bank. So, both fled the country.
Now, Mallya, who made his fortune with the popular Kingfisher brand of beer as well as Formula 1 and aviation, has taken refuge in the UK.
There he remains despite strenuous efforts by India to extradite him.
Irfan Razack, the chairman of Prestige Estates Projects which is part of the joint project to construct the tower, spoke about the challenges they have faced in its construction.
He said: “It was a challenge to construct the mansion on a huge cantilever at that height, but we have ensured we build it exactly the way it was conceived. It’s a complex structure and the finishing work is going on.
“We will finish the project as per contract and hand it over."
However, Mallya may never be able to return to India to claim the 'sky mansion'.
In 2022, the so-called 'king of good times' was handed a jail sentence of four months for disobeying an earlier court judgement regarding the collapse of his airline, Kingfisher Airlines.
The airline had been India's largest domestic carrier before its collapse.
Mallya will have to be extradited to India in order to face this sentence, as well as the fraud charges.
When asked about the case, UK Minister of State Security Tom Tugendhat has previously said he doesn't want the UK to become somewhere people can evade justice.
He told PTI: "We (the UK and India) both have legal processes that must be gone through. But the UK government is absolutely clear, we have no intention of becoming a place where those who are seeking to evade justice can hide."
In the meantime, the enormous sky mansion remains unoccupied.