Spl offences court grants bail to DKS in I-T case

Bail was opposed on the ground that he tore off slip with key entries

The special court for economic offences on Thursday granted bail to Energy Minister D K Shivakumar in the Income Tax case against him.

The magistrate court had taken cognisance of a prosecution complaint filed by the Income Tax officials in February, and issued summons to Shivakumar to appear before the court. The minister appeared before the court on Thursday morning and his counsel moved a bail application, which was posted for hearing at 3 pm.

Shivakumar was granted conditional bail, directing specifically not to tamper with evidence. The bail was executed for a personal bond of Rs 25,000, along with two sureties. The minister's counsel Sheshachala said the charges pressed against Shivakumar were bailable.

The sections pressed against Shivakumar are 276-c(1) of the Income Tax Act intentional attempt to evade tax and sections 201 and 204 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), causing disappearance and destruction of evidence relating to an offence.

Additional Solicitor General of the Karnataka High Court Prabhuling K Navadgi filed objections against granting bail, stating that when the search and seizure were conducted at Eagleton Resorts on August 2, 2017, I-T officials found a slip in the minister's wallet, which they asked him to surrender, but he tore it off.

"He (Shivakumar) had admitted this in a statement recorded by the I-T officials, saying that he felt nervous and tore it off.''

The officials then reconstructed the torn pieces of paper and found certain entries, particularly two figures of '5' and '5' which mentioned the names of ADN, Kaizen and E-Infrastructure. All these companies are owned by two persons. Shashikanth and Somashekhar, Navadgi said in the court.

Based on this note, the I-T department conducted independent searches in November 2017 on the premises of these two persons. When confronted, the two admitted that they were given a loan of Rs 10 crore by D K Shivakumar (5+5) through another person. There were a total of five such business associates of the minister, including the aforementioned duo.

There was another entry (8) in the note, against Somashekhar's name. Navadgi said Somashekhar admitted to have taken a loan of Rs 8 crore. All these co-related to the entries on the note and the transactions have not been shown by the assessee (Shivakumar) in his returns. This proved there was an attempt at tax evasion, Navadgi told the judge. Since the slip was torn, it was an attempt to destroy evidence and a prima facie case was made out, he said.

After the initiation of prosecution, Shivakumar had issued legal notices to all these witnesses to withdraw their statements against him. These people have actually withdrawn their statements. Therefore, it was prayed to the court that grant of bail would result in integrity of investigation being compromised with.