The Bombay High Court today asked CBI to inform it within two weeks whether any offence of bribery has been made out in an Income Tax report prepared after a raid on a company in 2012 regarding Godzari Irrigation project.
The direction was given by a bench headed by Justice P V Hardas, which asked the investigative agency to file a reply on the next occasion.
The court was hearing a PIL filed by activist Ketan Tirodkar who alleged the I-T department had raided a Kolhapur-based infrastructure company in 2012, wherein it came across hand-written notes of a director allegedly stating that bribe money had been paid to some people for Godzari Irrigation Company.
Tirodkar annexed to the petition a report prepared by a Deputy Income Tax Commissioner in which this allegation was mentioned.
The activist further argued that generally bribery offence is not within the purview of Income Tax. In this case, central government funds are involved in Maharashtra's Godzari Irrigation project and therefore CBI has the jurisdiction to take cognisance.
Tirodkar further argued that the Income Tax should have shared this information with CBI if they had come across an offence of bribery.
The court then asked the petitioner to hand over a copy of the report and affidavit filed by Income Tax to CBI to seek the latter's views in this matter.
The Income Tax department had filed an affidavit stating they had shared this information with its Regional Economic Intelligence Commission because they learnt of violation of laws other than the I-T Act.
The I-T department had earlier argued that the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) wanted to appear in this matter and hence the CBDT wanted time to engage a senior counsel.
Hearing the department's plea, the bench had granted time to the CBDT to engage a counsel. However nobody from the CBDT appeared till date.
