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CBI moves Apex court to cancel sacked I-T officer's arrest protection

New Delhi: The Central Bureau of Investigation on Wednesday approached the Supreme Court of India with a petition against the protection of arrest granted to former Income Tax official, SK Srivastava, who was earlier this year compulsorily retired by the Central government on charges of corruption.

The Orissa High Court had granted the controversial former civil servant protection from arrest in a CBI case, where the agency had accused him of passing income tax appeals orders in favour of certain assessees and backdating them to an earlier date, in exchange for undue favours.

The CBI had on Wednesday mentioned the matter to a bench headed by Justice NV Ramana, who subsequently allowed the matter to be heard.

Soon after Srivastava was compulsorily retired along with several other senior officers of the Income Tax department, the CBI had registered a corruption case against him and raided 13 of his premises, recovering jewellery worth Rs 2.47 crore, Rs 16.44 lakh in cash and watches worth Rs 10 lakh.

The probe agency had also found Rs 1.3 crore in bank accounts belonging to him and his family members along with incriminating documents and electronic evidence, officials had said at the time.

Sources here had said that Srivastava had employed a private individual by the name of Amardas to write and type up the appeal orders for him when he was posted as CIT Appeals 1 in Noida and held additional charge of Appeals 2 in Noida in exchange for a monthly salary.

In fact, officials here said that Srivastava had decided on 104 IT appeals out of which 13 cases were out of his jurisdiction and purportedly uploaded the orders sometime June 2019, backdating them to December 2018.

The CBI has alleged that Srivastava accessed the internal ITBA system of his office between June 11 and June 13 with his RSA token to upload the backdated orders. An RSA token is a personalised pass key issued to officials which allows them to access the ITBA system. Srivastava, a 1989-batch IRS officer, was compulsorily retired on June 10.

Moreover, he allegedly manipulated the dispatch records to show that he had dispatched these orders on June 7 when in fact, they were dispatched on June 14. Sources here added that the appeals orders were suspected to be passed in exchange for undue favours.

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