The Madras High Court on Wednesday refused to stay the prosecution launched by the Income Tax department against former Union Minister P. Chidambaram’s wife Nalini Chidambaram, son Karti P. Chidambaram and daughter-in-law Srinidhi Karti Chidambaram under the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act of 2015 for alleged non-disclosure of a property purchased by them at a cost of £5.35 lakh at Cambridge in the UK.
Plea rejected
Justice S. Baskaran rejected the plea for interim orders after A.P. Srinivas, senior standing counsel for the IT department, brought it to the notice of the court that the complaint lodged by the department against the petitioners before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) court at Egmore here was yet to be numbered. The judge simply adjourned a batch of writ petitions filed by the family to July 5 after directing the standing counsel to file a counter affidavit by then.
He also recorded the submission of the IT counsel that orders passed by higher officials granting sanction for prosecution could not be furnished to the petitioners as demanded by them. During the course of the argument, Mr. Srinivas told the court that the writ petitions had been filed prematurely and that copies of the complaints lodged by the department under the 2015 Act before the CMM would be furnished to the petitioners immediately after they get numbered.
Earlier, two senior counsel, representing the petitioners contended that the Principal Director of Income Tax (Investigation) was not a competent officer to launch prosecution under Section 50 of the Act since the show cause notices had been issued to the petitioners only by a Deputy Director in his capacity as the assessing officer. They also claimed that the CMM court was not a designated special court under the Act to take cognisance of the complaint.
‘No offence committed’
Rebutting the contentions, the standing counsel pointed out that Section 80 of the Act states that no court inferior to that of a metropolitan magistrate or a magistrate of the first class could try any offence under the enactment. However, petitioners’ counsel contended that no offence had been committed at all since the foreign asset had been duly declared by the family in their annual income tax returns for the relevant assessment year.
