Man gets jail for I-T fraud

A Special Court for Economic Offences convicted a businessman for suppression of facts and false statements in a tax case.

Vishwas Udaysingh Lad is a partner and director and shareholder in several companies. The special court convicted Lad for offences under sections 276C (1) (wilful attempt to evade tax) and 277 (false statement in verification) of I-T Act. The court sentenced him to six months’ rigorous imprisonment and fined him Rs 25,000 under section 276 C (1), and rigorous imprisonment for a period of six months and fine of Rs 25,000 under section 277. The sentences run concurrently. If he fails to pay the fine, Lad has to undergo an additional one-and-a-half month’s simple imprisonment.

Lad (41), a resident of HAL II Stage, had filed his tax returns declaring his taxable income as Rs 2.02 crore in September 2012. Later, he filed revised returns on March 2014 with a total income of Rs 3.26 crore. He showed this income consisting of his salary, house property, business, short-term capital gains and income from other sources.

During scrutiny, the director of Income Tax (Intelligence) found that Lad had fixed deposits of Rs 9.62 crore as on March 2010 in Tumkur Grain Merchant Co-Operative Bank Ltd at its branches in Bengaluru and he received Rs 69.33 lakh as interest on these deposits in the 2012-13 assessment year. The enquiry revealed that he had made these fixed deposits under different names such as Vishwas, Vishwas U. Lad and Vishwas S/o Uday Singh Lad.

However, all the names had the same address.

The income tax department had registered a case in 2014 and issued him a notice. Meanwhile, he filed a petition before the high court seeking to quash the proceedings stating that it was not intentional and that he had also revised the returns by paying the tax.

However, the high court dismissed his petition in 2016 stating that he had paid the tax only after the I-T department detected the concealment.