Court frames charges against five accused in multi-crore VAT scam

Chandigarh, August 20

A local court has framed charges against all five accused in the alleged VAT scam worth crores in the Excise and Taxation Department, Chandigarh. A case in this regard was registered by the Vigilance Bureau around four years ago.

The charges have been framed against NR Munjal, MD of M/s Ind Swift Limited, Bipen Mishra, Ankit Aggarwal, Ram Tirath and Shipali Sharma.

Shipali Sharma and Ram Tirath were the former employees of the Excise and Taxation Department. Ankit Aggarwal, a private person, was also allegedly involved with the accused, while Mishra was working as an accountant with the company. Public prosecutor JP Singh, while arguing for the state, claimed that there were sufficient evidences against the accused for framing the charges.

“Finding prima facie case for the offences punishable under Sections 120-B, 420, 467, 468 and 471 (read with Section 120-B), charges were framed against all accused, while under Sections 13 (2), 12 of the PC Act and Section 409 of the IPC, charges were framed against Shipali Sharma and Ankit Aggarwal, to which they pleaded not guilty and claimed trial,” said the court in the order after hearing the arguments.

The court has adjourned the hearing for October 11 for prosecution witnesses. The case was registered on August 1, 2018, by the Vigilance Bureau, Chandigarh, on the basis of a preliminary enquiry conducted by the SP (Vigilance), UT, on a complaint of the AETC, Excise and Taxation Department, UT, Chandigarh.

In the complaint, the AETC said a VAT notice of Rs 5,90,53,342 was issued to M/s Ind Swift Limited. During the hearing of an appeal case, an advocate of the company produced an order of regular VAT assessment for the year 2011-12. In the order, VAT was shown only for Rs 5,000. Since the order was not bearing any signatures of the designated authority, which passed it, the Excise and Taxation Department conducted an inquiry and found that the disposal register of the department had been tampered with. Fifty two assessment cases had been uploaded on the electronic disposal register after closing an audit of year 2014-15 without actual assessment using the login of the then ward in-charge which resulted in huge revenue losses to the state.

As per the chargesheet, Mishra was given Rs 3.50 lakh by the company to settle the account of outstanding amount towards provisional VAT assessment. He settled the amount of tax of Rs 5,90,53,342 with Rs 5,000 only with the connivance of other accused.

The chargesheet says during the course of the investigation, the Excise and Taxation Department had supplied 884 cases of fake entries, which were scrutinised on the basis of the IP address used for making the entries. From the scrutiny, it was revealed that Shipali Sharma, while using the IP address allotted to her, had made several forged entries in the electronic VAT disposal register to show that VAT assessment was finalised. In fact, nothing was carried out in the actual record.