As in China, which is dealing with its own corporate debt hangover, India’s troubles stem from its efforts to spur growth after the 2008 global financial crisis. Regulators loosened fiscal and monetary policies and allowed many industries to restructure loans rather than let them go sour. It also allowed a moratorium on interest payments. Lenders responded, and over the next four years bank lending to nonfinancial companies roughly doubled.

But people inside and outside the country increasingly worried about rising defaults and banks’ ability to meet new global financial stability requirements. In September, Raghuram Rajan, India’s top central banker, ordered lenders to provide a full accounting.

Mr. Mallya — who in India is often compared to Richard Branson, the British entrepreneur — is one of India’s most famous names. His company, the United Breweries Group, makes Kingfisher beer and sells everything from alcohol to chemicals and fertilizer. He has a personal stake in India’s only Formula One team. He is a regular presence on the party circuit, and made headlines 10 years ago when he held a lavish birthday party at which the singer Lionel Richie was the star performer.

“I work hard and I play hard, too,” he once said. “There is nothing wrong with that.”

When the post-2008 lending binge hit, Mr. Mallya saw a chance to help one of his newer businesses: airlines. His Kingfisher Airlines was initially modeled on the low-cost American carrier JetBlue, with an all-economy configuration that included seat-back TVs, unheard of on Indian domestic flights.

Mr. Mallya quickly added a lavish business class to Kingfisher. Roomy seats came with champagne glasses filled with cider, since India forbids alcohol on domestic flights. The airline was a pet project of Mr. Mallya’s; he examined the in-flight napkins and interviewed some of the prospective flight attendants himself.

But Kingfisher Airlines suffered from an inefficient mix of planes and tough competition, which increased when it started flying internationally. Capitalizing on the looser lending practices, the airline persuaded its lenders to restructure its debt. Two years later, in 2012, Kingfisher stopped flying in the face of high fuel prices and a global slowdown.

Kingfisher owed at least $1.4 billion in loans, much of it to state-controlled banks, as well as back pay to former employees and other bills. Because Mr. Mallya and his United Breweries Holdings backed some of the loans, creditors began pressing them for repayment. The dispute began to wind its way through the courts. Banks tried to seize Mr. Mallya’s assets, including his estate in Goa.