The Gujarat High Court rejected the application for pre-arrest bail as the benefit of was obtained by input tax credit (ITC) illegally opened GST Account on basis of false and fabricated documents.
The accused, Hitendra Chandrakant Shah, with the connivance of other accused as named in the FIR with a view to obtain the financial benefits in the form of input tax credit illegally opened the GST Account on the basis of the false and fabricated documents. It is also alleged in the FIR that the said dummy accounts were used by using false documents / bills for obtaining financial benefits from the government exchequer illegally.
The Advocate for the petitioner submitted that petitioner is innocent and has not played any active or passive role in obtaining the false input tax credit and that for the alleged period of committing offence, he was behind the bar in some other offence lodged before the Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate and the High Court has released the applicant on regular bail in connection to the said offence which indicates that present applicant was not involved in the huge scam of getting input tax credit illegally.
The APP has vehemently opposed the bail application by submitting that the petitioner is wanted accused. He acted hand in gloves with the main accused and in connivance with the other accused as named in the FIR and taken advantage of the documents of some other persons and made GST registration of firms and then without the actual selling or purchasing indulged into in preparing bogus bills and obtained false input tax credit and as such committed the offence as alleged in the FIR to the tune of Rs.1500 Crore.
A Single Bench of Justice JC Doshi observed that “Money is transferred from one account to another account and such huge loss has been caused to the government exchequer by the petitioner. Hence, serious economic offence is made out against the petitioner, which has wide effect on the society. Thus, the petitioner has failed to make out a case to allow this application and grant of pre-arrest bail.”
“The public exchequer has been cheated. It also appears that upon documents of some other persons registration of the GST has been made to avail false input tax credit. Bogus bills are also prepared for the same and thus the present applicant has played an important role in commission of the offence of economic nature” the Court concluded.
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