About 10 years ago I was handling a flight departing belonging to a certain ME airline.
It had arrived from the ME and was supposed to depart KUL to CGK (shuttle with same crew). They had a problem with the landing gear not retracting but elected to continue to CGK as they had uplifted fuel for the return leg as well ex-KUL so the higher burn was still OK.
MCC picked this up and instructed them to divert to SIN instead where facilities like aircraft jacks etc would be available.
My point is that once you are up in the air.. you have to land somewhere and landing at an airport where facilities are better would be preferable to getting stuck somewhere without facilities. In the above example, CGK would not have had jacks and parts for this aircraft type and the AOG could potentially be weeks.
I could imagine the scenario here where the PIC was instructed to continue to Mumbai but when fuel became an issue they had to divert. The resulting fallout could be a case of the pilots being sacrificed to save HQ's 'face'.