A Delhi court on Thursday pulled up the Income Tax (IT) Department for withholding information on foreign bank accounts of those persons against whom it has filed complaints and slapped a fine of Rs
10,000 on it.
Directing the department to deposit the fine amount in the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (ACMM) Devendra Kumar Sharma said the tax body was not placing complete documents, which could have evidentiary value, on record for reasons best known to it.
"In almost all the cases, the information is being withheld from the court in respect to the source of information of foreign bank account of the accused persons.
"Previously also, there has been direction time and again to place on record the copy of source of information so that no undue advantage to the accused persons may be there in future, reason being that in all the cases like in hand where the accused are having alleged bank accounts in foreign country, the argument is being advanced that there is no legally admissible evidence on record in respect to source of information," the court said.
The court's order came during the hearing of a fresh complaint filed by <g data-gr-id="18">IT</g> department against one Sanjiv Gupta for his failure to produce documents of his foreign bank account.