Jodhpur Court Sends Two Tax Officers to Prison Over Rs 15 Lakh Bribe

In Jodhpur, a special CBI court on Friday gave two Income Tax officials four years in jail for taking a bribe of Rs. 15 lakh. The court cleared the jeweller, who was accused of being the middleman. Besides jail, the officials were also told to pay a fine of Rs. 1.10 lakh each.

Delivering the judgement, President Officer Bhupendra Sanadhya observed that the actions of the officials constituted serious corruption, undermining public trust in government institutions according to the court order.

This case goes back to March 2015, when then-Chief Income Tax Commissioner Pawan Kumar Sharma and Inspector Shailendra Bhandari were arrested along with jeweller Chandra Prakash Katta after Barmer businessman Kishore Jain approached the CBI. He claimed that income tax officials had wrongly increased his tax for the year 2012-13 from Rs. 2.5 crore to Rs. 12 crore and then asked him for a bribe to resolve the issue.

The bribe was first set at Rs. 25 lakh but later reduced to Rs. 23 lakh after negotiations. Jain, who had already won a favourable decision at the Commissioner of Appeals, said he continued to face pressure from senior officials even after the ruling.

After his complaint, the CBI set a trap. On March 31, 2015, Bhandari was caught taking Rs. 15 lakh at Katta’s showroom. Investigators said the money was for Sharma, and all three were arrested.

The two officials and the jeweller were charged under Section 120B of the IPC and the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988. Katta was later acquitted because there wasn’t enough evidence against him.

The CBI also raided eight of Sharma’s properties across the country and filed a separate case against him for having assets worth crores that didn’t match his income, including land and other valuable items.