Talk about a strange real estate story. Indian tycoon Subrata Roy is racing against the clock to try to sell the New York Plaza and London’s Grosvenor House in order to raise the $1.6 billion that he needs…for bail.

Roy is currently in Tihar, a New Delhi prison complex that houses 12,000 inmates. He needs to post the 100 billion rupees in cash and bank guarantees to get released. He’s been jailed since March after failing to appear at a contempt hearing in a long-running dispute with the capital markets watchdog over the company’s failure to repay billions of dollars to investors who had outlawed bonds sold to them.

Now, Roy has been given a 600 square feet office space where he can have video conference calls and receive visitors while still in jail. It’s not easy to sell a lavish hotel from a jail cell, and Roy is hoping that now he’ll be able to wheel and deal his way out of the hotels and out of jail.

Time will tell is he manages to pull this off.