The Court of Special Judge for CBI, Haryana refused to grant anticipatory bail to CGST Official Gurvinder Singh Sohal, public servant allegedly involved in the bribery case.
The Applicant-accused, Gurvinder Singh Sohal has sought anticipatory bail as accused under Sections 120 IPC and under Section 7 of the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988 (as amended in 2018).
According to the FIR filed by the CBI, the accused had demanded bribe from a company owner Manoj Kalra of Sonipat. According to the Kalra complaint to the premier investigating agency, he was being pressured by the four officials to pay them Rs 12 lakh or face GST evasion charges.
The CBI team, which had reached Rohtak on Friday night and left on Saturday evening, also recovered a red bag containing cash running into lakhs from the arrested accused Rohtak residence. Kalra had stated in his complaint that he runs a medicine factory in Sonipat.
On August 6, a team of CGST department from Rohtak had come to conduct a search, Claiming that the factory’s GST has not been deposited as per rules, and therefore, heavy fines would be imposed on him, the accused pressured him to settle the deal for Rs 12 Lakh and accepted an amount of Rs.3 lakh on the spot. However, before handing over the remaining amount, the complainant approached the CBI.
The CBI submitted that involvement of applicant-accused in the demand and acceptance of huge bribe amounts from the complainant is writ large as detailed in the reply and that custodial interrogation of applicant-accused is very much necessary in the interest of investigation.
Therefore, the Special Judge of Jagdeep Singh refused to grant anticipatory bail and held that custodial interrogation of the applicant-accused is very much necessary in the interest of investigation.
“No public servant can be allowed to behave and act as an extortionist. The menace of corruption is eating into the vitals of our society and the same needs to be dealt with sternly,” the court said.
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