Prayagraj, 12 September: The Allahabad High Court has refused to release on bail dozens of accused of Goods and Service Tax (GST) fraud of more than 4000 crores rupees.
This order was given by Justice Manju Rani Chauhan while rejecting the bail pleas of Rajiv Jindal and 55 others of Gautam Buddh Nagar.
The court said that while granting bail, the court has to consider the nature of the crime, reliability of evidence, possibility of punishment, conduct and circumstances of the accused, ensuring the presence of the accused in the trial, possibility of influencing the witnesses, general public and the wider interest of the state etc.
It is worth mentioning that Saurabh Dwivedi, editor of Lallan Top web news portal, lodged an FIR in Sector 20 police station of Noida that GST firms were registered in Punjab and Maharashtra without his permission using his fake ID. He demanded an investigation. When the SIT was formed and the investigation of the case was started, the fraud being committed at the national level was revealed. It was found that dozens of accused are involved in the entire fraud, who register GST using fake IDs of people and are cheating the government of crores of rupees by taking input tax credit fraudulently on it.
The court was told that the accused have caused a loss of thousands of crores of rupees to the government by registering fake GST firms and obtaining input tax credit. In the investigation so far, a case of fake input tax credit of 4000 crores has come to light by them. Whereas a loss of more than 2,645 thousand crores has been caused to the government treasury. The investigation is still going on. Many accused have come forward in this case, on the basis of whose statements the names of other accused have come to light.
The petitioners said that they are not named in the FIR. They have been falsely implicated. The government said that during the investigation, a large number of company data, fake SIM cards, mobile phones, fake documents and cash have been recovered from many accused. The petitioners said that fake GST numbers have been obtained from states outside Uttar Pradesh.
The complainant himself is a resident of Delhi and the FIR has been lodged in Gautam Buddha Nagar. The court rejected this objection and said that even if fake companies have been created in other states, GST not only monitors the supply chain within the state but also the interstate supply chain.
The court said that the veracity of the complaint cannot be questioned on the basis of jurisdiction. The court has rejected all the bail petitions considering the seriousness of the crime.
