New Delhi, May 28 (IANS) The Income Tax (I-T) Department was pulled up by a court here for withholding information on foreign bank accounts of accused people and fined it Rs. 10,000.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) D.K. Sharma in an order delivered on Monday pulled up the I-T department for not placing before it complete documents.
“In almost all the cases the information is being withheld from the court in respect to the source of information of foreign bank account of the accused persons,” the magistrate said.
“There have been directions time and again to place on record the copy of source of information…,”, the court said.
The court observed that there were cases pending at the stage of taking cognizance for want of those documents but documents are not being placed on record.
“Though the time is being sought for placing the documents on record, however there is no explanation on behalf of the complainant as to why those documents pertaining to source of information having evidentiary value are not placed on record,” the court said and slapped I-T department with a fine of Rs.10,000 directing it to deposit the amount in the Prime Minister’s Relief Fund.
The court’s order came during the hearing of a fresh complaint filed by I-T department against one Sanjiv Gupta for his failure to produce documents about his foreign bank account.
According to the complaint, Gupta was holding Rs.two crore in HSBC Bank in Geneva.
The order was delivered on Monday but was released on Thursday.