PARAMINDER SINGH KALRA Vs. COMMISSIONER, INCOME TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) The petitioner is said to be the Director/EEO of one M/S Consortium Securities Pvt. Ltd. On 28th July, 2011 the respondent/ department conducted a search on the premises of petitioner on the allegation that an information was received from the Government of France that petitioner is having an account in HSBC Bank, Zurich, Switzerland with the mala fide intention to evade tax and to hide money transactions.

(2.) The respondent/department preferred a criminal complaint being CC No.511538/16 (Old CC No.131/2014), under Section 276-D of the Income Tax Act on 28th February, 2015 against the petitioner. The respondent/ department also preferred two separate criminal complaints under Section 276-C (1) and Section 277 of the Income Tax Act being CC No. 528982/16 (Old CC No.157/4) and CC No.528983/16 (Old CC No.158/4) on 12th January, 2016. In this petition, the stand of the petitioner is that the respondent/department has preferred these complaints on the very same material, evidence, witnesses and documents and the allegation in all the three complaints are to a large extent word to word same.

(3.) The petitioner is facing three separate trials in all the three complaints before the same Magistrate for allegedly not declaring the fact of having a foreign account to the Income Tax authorities, though the material and evidence relied upon by the respondent/department is similar in all the three complaints. Petitioner stated that he had filed an application before the learned Magistrate for clubbing of the three complaints and joint trial, which was rejected by the learned Magistrate on 30th June, 2018 while observing as under:-