The Punjab and Haryana high court has ordered the immediate release of a Jalandhar businessman and sought an explanation from two officials of the Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) commissionerate, Ludhiana.
However, the officers passed an arrest order at noon without even taking the high court order into account. Boparai submitted that the principal commissioner had indulged in manipulation of records and shown scant regard to the orders passed by the court. He was kept in illegal confinement and shown arrested the next day at 4:45 am.
The authorities have shown scant regard for the orders passed by the court as would be clearly reflected from the … (proceedings of the case),” the bench of chief justice Ashwani Kumar Mishra and justice Rohit Kapoor observed while impleading two officers — principal commissioner, CGST, Sugrive Meena and senior intelligence officer (SIO), Mohmad Saleem— as parties and seeking their explanation about the conduct and why disciplinary proceedings should not be ordered against them. Meena had authorised the arrest and Saleem had effected it. On September 22, while dealing with tax-evasion-related proceedings and on petition from the Jalandhar businessman, Kuldeep Goyal, the high court had asked him to appear before the tax authorities on September 23. Senior advocate NS Boparai, the businessman, armed with the high court order, appeared before the authorities at 11 am, according to Goyal’s lawyer.
“…the facts which have emerged before the court would reveal that the respondent authorities considered the order of the court as a charter to proceed in the manner they deemed appropriate.
However, the court observed that the least that was expected from these officers was that they could have apprised the court of the same on September 29, when the case was to be taken up. We, otherwise, find the action of the respondents to be an attempt to overreach the proceedings of the court,” it said, asking the officers to submit their personal responses by September 29. “The routine manner in which the authorisation to arrest the petitioner is issued by the department leaves much to be desired.
“… Prima facie, we find the reasons for authorising the petitioner’s arrest to be wholly misplaced inasmuch as the petitioner was already present before the authorities with all records and was willing to cooperate with the investigation under the orders of this court,” it recorded. It further said that the authorisation for arrest neither records the orders passed by the high court nor the fact that the petitioner had already appeared along with records to facilitate investigation in the matter.
