A Delhi Court today rejected the IT Department's argument that a businessman, accused in a blackmoney case, should not be allowed to stand surety for his Pak-origin wife in a case relating to her foreign bank accounts, saying he has control over his wife as a husband.
Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pritam Singh granted bail to Nasreen Moin Qureshi, wife of meat exporter Moin Akhtar Qureshi, on furnishing of a personal bond of Rs 50,000 and a surety of a like amount after she appeared in the court.
As her husband offered to stand surety for her, advocate Brijesh Garg, appearing for Income Tax(IT) Department, opposed it saying he was also an accused in a similar case and cannot become surety for another accused.
The court, however, rejected the argument saying "he is the husband and has control over this accused (Nasreen), so surety is accepted".
Qureshi is also facing prosecution in a black money case for allegedly not disclosing an income of nearly Rs 20 crore.
During the hearing, Garg urged the court to impose stringent bail conditions on Nasreen, including that she cannot leave the country without the court's permission as the case related to foreign bank accounts.
The court directed the woman that she should intimate the court prior to travelling abroad.
The court had earlier summoned her as an accused in the case after taking cognisance of the complaint filed by the IT department under the IT Act and the IPC.
It was alleged in the complaint that a search was carried out by IT Department in Nasreen's case and in other connected cases of Qureshi's AMQ Group on February 15, 2014.
In her preliminary statement, Nasreen had stated that she had only one bank account in HSBC and had denied owning assets in any foreign country.
"Evidence clearly showed that Nasreen Moin Qureshi has not disclosed deposits in JP Morgan Chase Bank in USA for income tax and such deposits represent her undisclosed income, not offered to taxation in returns of income filed by her thereby causing huge loss to revenue," the I-T department had said.
It had alleged that the meat exporter's wife had made a false statement in her IT returns for the relevant period.
In her statement to the IT department in April 2014, Nasreen had said that before her marriage, her father, who was a native of Pakistan, would have opened her bank account in Pakistan and other countries but no account was opened abroad after her marriage.
The complaint, however, had said Nasreen's claim that the foreign bank account was opened by her father was found to be false and investigation has confirmed that she maintained account with the bank in the US.
It also alleged that Nasreen had signed the documents in April, 2010 to open two accounts in the US' bank and total deposit in them were over USD 3,02,599.
The complaint had said she used debit cards for expenses or withdrawal from the foreign account and she had withdrawn USD 1,79,532.
