Will online registration eliminate corruption? - Service Tax Inspector sentenced to seven years imprisonment
THE Special CBI Court, Dehradun on Saturday sentenced a young Inspector of Service Tax to seven years rigorous imprisonment. The charge against him was that:
He while posted and functioning as Inspector Service Tax, Service Tax Division, Roorkee (Haridwar) Uttarakhand on 30.04.15 demanded an illegal gratification of Rs. 3500/- from Shri xxx New Adarsh Nagar, Roorkee District Haridwar for registration of firm xxxx Labour Contractor and he asked the complainant on 5.5.15 to come to his office at Roorkee on 06.05.15 where he demanded Rs. 3,500/- as bribe by writing on a sheet of white paper for verification of the documents relating to the above firm and he was caught red handed on 06.05.15 by CBI team in presence of two independent witnesses for demanding and accepting the bribe of Rs. 3500/- as illegal gratification other than legal remuneration as motive for doing an official act as mentioned above and he thus committed an offence punishable u/s 7 of Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988.
It was pleaded on his behalf that he was young and so the least possible punishment be given, but the Court was not impressed. The Judge quoted a Supreme Court judgement, "The court will be failing in its duty if appropriate punishment is not awarded for a crime which has been committed not only against the individual victim but also against the society to which the criminal and the victim belong. The punishment to be awarded for a crime must not be irrelevant but it should conform to and be consistent with the atrocity and brutality with which the crime has been perpetrated, the enormity of the crime warranting public abhorrence and it should "respond to the society's cry for justice against the criminal"
In the judgement written in Hindi, the Judge observed,
And he sent the Inspector to a jail term of seven years with a fine of Rs.20,000. It is very difficult to become an Inspector but see how easy it is to blow it up. He would get a salary of about 50,000 rupees, but for a sum of Rs.3,500, he will lose his job and spend the next twenty years pursuing this case.
Online transactions were expected to bring down corruption, but registration online and bribery offline appear to be the norm.
Registration of nearly a crore of assessees under GST is to open soon. Big Business?
When a new source of taxation is found it never means, in practice, that an old source is abandoned. It merely means that the politicians have two ways of milking the taxpayer where they had only one before.
Until Tomorrow with more DDT
Have a nice day.
Mail your comments to vijaywrite@tiol.in