The then Home Secretary of Madhya Pradesh Rajesh Rajora had a relief from High Court on Saturday, in connection with the Income Tax raid conducted at his residence in 2008.
The court termed the action as illegal and asked the department to set aside subsequent proceedings. The double bench of acting Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court Justice Krishna Kumar lahoti and Justice AA Siddiqui, in its order mentioned that whatever goods seized in the raid, were already registered in the income tax returns filed by Rahora.
The court stated that the action of Income Tax cannot be taken only on suspicion, for the purpose, the officials need to be satisfied. Under any rules, the revenue officials have not been given unlimited powers.
It was also pointed out in the order that the action taken against Rajora was without any concrete base. It seems that the Income Tax officer was issued warrant in connection with dispute related to house allotment. In the light of this dispute, the complete action against Rajora was illegal, the court stated.
The Counsel of Rajora, Sumit Nema told the court that Income Tax Commissioner (Investigation) SS Rana had applied for Government accommodation on January 23, 2008, when Rajora was Secretary in Home department. Rajora had the powers to allot the house, but in the process, around four months passed. On this, Rana approached CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan on May 20, 2008 and he directed Rajora to immediately allot house to the I-T official.
Nema further informed that on May 28, the I-T official issued a notice on May 28 and Rajora’s Government house in Char Imli locality was raided on May 30. During the process, the I-T officials had recovered property worth `2 lakh, gold ornaments worth `1.5 lakh and `27,767 in cash.
The I-T officials had conducted the raid on the basis of a piece of paper that was recovered eight months ago from the residence of Director of Health Department Yogiraj Sharma, when his premises were raided.