Rejecting the bail plea of an officer of the Central Goods and Services Tax (CGST) department, who was arrested in a bribery case, a Vadodara court observed that “corruption has stalled development” in the country and “bribery”. overshadowed the practice of “. in the bureaucracy”.
The 13th Additional Sessions Judge, Vadodara, dismissed the plea, which was the second attempt by a CGST inspector arrested by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) in July this year for allegedly accepting a bribe of Rs 2.5 lakh.
In the order passed on Monday, the court said, “Corruption has stifled development and created a kind of pollution among the bureaucracy with demands of bribes by officials. These are signs of white-collar crime. This is the reason why the economic development of the country has stalled.”
The case pertains to Grade 3 Inspector Shivraj Meena of the Central GST Office in Vadodara, who was arrested on July 7 along with Superintendent Grade 2 Nitin Gautam for demanding a bribe of Rs 10 lakh from a manufacturer of food and soft drinks. They drink alcohol at Baska near Halol in Panchmahal district.
The ACB, which filed the chargesheet in the court, said the complainant was initially compelled to pay Rs 50,000 and thereafter the authorities “kept demanding the balance amount”.
District government counsel Anil Desai objected to the bail plea saying that the complainant, who ran flour and food production business in Baska, diversified into packaged water business in 2013 and soft drinks business in 2019. The complainant has a GST license for businesses. Two different names.
The complainant alleged that the CGST officials who had gone to search the premises of his Jai Kuber Atta and Food Production Pvt Ltd. Ltd. on June 15, 2021, asked to discontinue the CCTV cameras and asked it to pay GST at the rate of 28% on soft drinks. When the complainant argued with the authorities about the slab of 12% GST for soft drinks and 5% for snacks, the GST officials allegedly threatened that if he refused to pay Rs 10 lakh, So his company will be sealed before he can be summoned.
Desai argued, “When the complainant and his father appeared in response to the summons, they were allegedly told that there was ‘pressure’ to register the case and if the authorities agreed to pay the amount they would be ‘ Can do something. On July 6, the complainant informed the officials over phone that they had arranged Rs 2.5 lakh and asked them to hand over the money in the second half of the working day.
The defense counsel argued that “there is no apprehension that the accused will tamper with the evidence”. Meena’s counsel SH Patel argued, “According to a Supreme Court precedent, keeping an accused in judicial custody in pre-trial mode is as good as imprisoning a convict.”
Dismissing the petition, the court said, “The Gujarat High Court has called for looking at economic offenses from a different point of view in the previous cases. Therefore, we have to consider the charge sheet as well as the fact that Rs. The bribe amount was recovered from the boot of a private car, along with the fact that the previous regular bail application of the accused was rejected…”
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