The Madras High Court on Tuesday stayed all further proceedings in an alleged tax evasion case prosecuted by the Income Tax department against Sivaganga Member of Parliament Karti P. Chidambaram and his wife Srinidhi Karti Chidambaram before a special court for hearing cases booked against legislators.
Justice M. Sundar granted the interim stay till January 27 when he would take up for final hearing a couple of petitions filed by the MP and his wife in August last questioning the jurisdiction of the special court to conduct trial and also two other petitions filed recently to quash the entire I-T proceedings.
The case against the petitioners dates back to March 2015 when they had sold their 1.16 acre property at Muttukadu to Agni Estates and Foundations Private Limited. The charge was that the couple disclosed only payments received through cheques as sale consideration and did not disclose the cash receipts.
Initially, the I-T department had initiated prosecution before an Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court, designated to hear cases related to economic offences, at Egmore here. However, after Mr. Karti Chidambaram became a MP in May 2019, the High Court Registry transferred the case to the special court for legislators.
Challenging such transfer, the petitioners claimed that it was impermissible in law to transfer a case from a Magistrate court to a Court of Sessions. They also contended that since the alleged offence had taken place in 2015 and the first petitioner had become a legislator only in 2019, there was no necessity to transfer the case.
In their quash petitions, the couple pointed out that the statutory time limit for the I-T department to pass a reassessment order for the year 2014-15 had expired on December 31, 2019. “Thus in the absence of the reassessment order, the allegation that the original return filed on July 29, 2014 is a false return is not correct and hence no offence is attracted,” they claimed.
Before fixing a date for final hearing of all the four cases, Justice Sundar told the lawyers representing all parties in the case that he had appeared as a counsel for Agni Estates and Foundations Private Limited in a totally different case during his stint as an advocate. Therefore, he wanted to know whether any one had objection to him hearing the present petitions.
All the lawyers in unison expressed no objection. After recording their submission, the judge proceeded to fix January 27 as the date of final hearing. In the meantime, when he was apprised that the special court was about to frame charges against the petitioners, he said, it would not be appropriate do so pending adjudication of the present petitions. Since the jurisdiction of the special court itself had been questioned by the petitioners, it would be advisable for that court to put on hold all further proceedings until further orders from the High Court, he said.
