The court found sufficient evidence to establish the complicity of the accused in the GST evasion scam and denied bail to the main accused. The court granted bail to Satnarain, considering his profession and the fact that he had already been in custody for about 8 months.

JUDGMENT

Gurvinder Singh Gill, J. - This order shall dispose of the above mentioned three petitions filed on behalf of Rajesh, Inder Partap Singh, Manish and Satnarain seeking grant of regular bail in a case registered against them vide FIR No.571 dated 4.6.2019 under Sections 419/420/467/468/471/120-B/259 IPC registered at Police Station Chandni Bagh, District Panipat.

2. The FIR in question was lodged at the instance of ASI Vinod Kumar wherein it has been alleged that on 4.6.2019 when he along with other police officials was present near grain market bridge for the purpose of patrolling, then a secret information was received to the effect that Rajesh Mittal, Inder Partap Singh and Manish make bogus firms and by transacting with bigger firms, they are getting huge amounts of money deposited in the account numbers of the said fake bogus firms so as to save GST and are thus causing huge loss to the State Exchequer on account of loss of revenue. The information was further to the effect that the said accused were moving about in a 'i-20' car bearing registration No.HR-06AJ-2474 along with laptops and were waiting for someone near T-point railway line grain market.

3. Pursuant to receipt of aforesaid information, the police swung into action and was able to apprehend the aforesaid accused Rajesh Mittal, Inder Pratap Singh and Manish. From the search of the car, the following articles were also recovered :-

(i) Laptops;

(ii) Cheque Books;

(iii) Fake stamps of ETO;

(iv) Fake rubber-stamps of DTC;

(v) Files of bogus firms.

4. The aforesaid articles as well as the car in question was taken into possession. The car in question was found to be registered in the name of Vipul Jindal, who happens to be 'jija' (brother-in-law) of Rajesh Mittal. During the course of investigation, the police was able to unearth the entire racket of evasion of GST. It was found that Rajesh Mittal was the kingpin who issued bogus bills purported to have been issued by one M/s Lalit Trading Company, which was infact out of business. Such bogus bills were issued in favour of 18 firms in respect of bogus transaction of sale of yarn. The said 18 firms had been got incorporated/registered by associating persons of the status of rickshaw pullers etc. and were not actually businessmen.

5. It was further found that in the bills issued by M/s Lalit Trading Company in favour of the said 18 bogus firms (non-functional firms), GST was also shown to have been charged.

6. During investigation, it further surfaced that the said 18 non-functional firms further issued bills in favour of 421 different industries based in Panipat and the said industries in Panipat in order to reflect expenditure in respect of their manufacturing processes and in order to lend credibility to their so called purchase of yarn made banking transactions in favour of said 18 firms and the amount so transferred through banking transactions used to be withdrawn from the bank accounts of the said firms and given back to those industries while retaining some percentage. Thus, in this manner, the industries of Panipat without actually incurring expenditure, used to reflect expenditure in their accounts and thus, also used to evade payment of a substantial amount of GST on the premises that the initial supplier i.e. M/s Lalit Trading Company had already charged the GST. The mastermind of this entire racket was found to be Rajesh Mittal who used the name of the firm M/s Lalit Trading Company for the issuance of bogus bills in favour of 18 firms created and registered by him with the help of some ordinary persons (non-businessmen) for the purpose of showing transactions and the said 18 firms further reflected transactions with 421 industries of Panipat. The loss of revenue in terms of GST was assessed at about 80 crores.

7. Learned counsel for the petitioners have submitted that they have falsely been implicated in the present case and that there is no convincing evidence to show that the petitioner Rajesh