Ex-Addil Commissioner of Income Tax sent to jail for 4 yrs

A former Additional Commissioner of Income Tax, arrested by CBI for demanding Rs one lakh as bribe for clearing a tax return matter, has been sentenced to four years in jail by a Delhi court.

Special CBI Judge Talwant Singh also imposed a fine of Rs four lakh on convict H A Siddiqui in the graft case registered against him in 2003 on a complaint by a chartered accountant M M Sachdeva.

"Prosecution (CBI) has been successful in proving that accused H A Siddiqui had demanded bribe of Rs one lakh from R P Katyal through his CA M M Sachdeva who is the complainant in this case.

"...The conversation recorded in office of the accused shows that demand of bribe was made by the accused in clear words and place of acceptance was to be fixed later on as he had taken the mobile phone number of Katyal," the court said.

According to CBI, Sachdeva had filed Katyal's income tax return for 2000-01 and it was selected for scrutiny assessment and a notice in this regard was received by Katyal on October 25, 2002.

Siddiqui started sending summons to them in this regard and called Katyal to pay Rs one lakh bribe, the agency said.

It said a trap team was constituted and it apprehended Siddiqui and one M C Gupta, who was a prosecution witness in the case, at the spot and money was recovered from the polybag carried by Gupta.

CBI had registered the FIR in the case on April 2, 2003, and had filed its chargesheet against Siddiqui in November that year.

During the trial, Siddiqui claimed innocence saying Sachdeva and Gupta, both chartered accountants, had tried to get undue advantage from him and when he refused to do so, they implicated him in a false case.

The court, however, said CBI has proved its case against Siddiqui beyond reasonable doubt.

The court also relied on reports regarding identification of voices saying that it has been proved beyond reasonable doubt that the voice samples were of Siddiqui, Sachdeva and Katyal.

"Report regarding identification of voices in the questioned recording as well as the specimen recording are proved beyond reasonable doubt being of accused (Siddiqui), the complainant and Katyal," it said.