Economic offences pose a threat to financial health of the country which is unfortunately facing an alarming rise in white-collar crimes, a Delhi court today observed while denying bail to a Customs Commissioner and another man in an alleged corruption case.
The court dismissed the bail pleas of Atul Dikshit, the Commissioner of Customs at the inland container depot (ICD) in Tuglakabad here and private person Sehdev Gupta, considering that allegations against them were serious in nature and a huge loss has been caused to the exchequer.
"The economic offence having deep rooted conspiracies and involving huge loss to the public funds needs to be viewed seriously and considered as grave offences as they affect the economy of the country and pose threat to the financial health of the country," Special CBI Judge S C Rajan said.
"Unfortunately, the country has been facing an alarming rise in the white-collar crimes, which has affected the economic structure of the country. Economic offences have serious repercussions on the development of the country as a whole," the court said.
According to the CBI, the accused were arrested on the allegations of fraudulent release of duty draw back (an amount of excise or import duty remitted on goods exported) amounting to Rs 74.61 crore by custom officers at ICD Tuglakabad and ICD Patparganj to five Delhi-based firms controlled by Gupta.
The agency had alleged in its FIR that duty draw back was released despite the directions of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) to suspend it with respect to these firms.
During the arguments on bail plea, senior advocate Ramesh Gupta, appearing for Gupta, told the court that his client has been falsely implicated and he was not needed for any further probe as charge sheet has already been filed by CBI.
Advocate R K Anand, who appeared for Dikshit, said the case was lodged on false averments and his client has been made a "scapegoat" between the two government departments.
