The Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai police has summoned Ashish Hemrajani, CEO of Big Tree Entertainment, which is the parent company of BookMyShow over the ticket sales of British rock band Coldplay’s concert in India. 

Ashish Hemrajani and its technical head were issued summons on Friday, September 27, but they reportedly did not appear before the EOW. The complaint against BookMyShow was submitted by Amit Vyas, founder partner of a law firm Vertices Partners on Friday. Hinting at a large-scale ticketing scam in connection with the concert, he alleged that key decision-makers at BookMyShow and Live Nation were involved in orchestrating the scam. 

“These platforms manipulated access by logging out legitimate users or blocking them from the site, enabling ticket bots and black-market operators to take control of the sales, which began at 12 PM on September 22. Tickets were sold out on BookMyShow but appeared on third-party resale sites like Viagogo. The prices were inflated 30 to 50 times their original value,” the complaint read.

Coldplay announced its Music Of The Spheres World Tour 2025 at Navi Mumbai’s DY Patil Stadium on January 18 and 19, and the tickets were sold out within minutes. Due to the high demand, a third show was added on January 20, but that also sold out quickly.  

This is the second time that Coldplay will be performing in India, they last visited the country in 2016 when they performed in Mumbai as a part of the Global Citizen Festival.

BookMyShow had filed a police complaint stating that they are not associated with any ticket selling or reselling platforms such as Viagogo. “Scalping is strictly condemned and punishable by law in India. We have filed a complaint with the police authorities and will provide complete support to them in the investigation,” a statement read, asking consumers not to fall for the fake ticket scam.

(With inputs from IANS)