Vijaya Baskar moves court to cross examine Sekar Reddy

Justice Anita Sumanth, before whom the plea came up for hearing on Tuesday, directed the counsel appearing for Income Tax (I-T) to get instructions regarding the prayer and posted the case to Friday for further hearing. In his plea, Vijaya Baskar had submitted that consequent to the search, various alleged sworn statements of third parties were taken, like that of Sekar Reddy and Madhav Rao of SRS Mining, which are adversarial to him. Moreover, the Income Tax department was relying on the alleged sworn statements obtained from those witnesses and some loose sheets obtained from third parties as independent, documentary and concrete evidences, which was unlawful, he contended.

Noting that he has a very strong case on merits and was looking to counter all the documentary evidence relied on by the Income Tax department, the Health Minister said the only way to counter the oral evidence sought to be relied on by the department was through cross examination of those witnesses from whom statements have been obtained. But after writing almost 10 letters requesting the I-T department to give him the opportunity to cross examine the witnesses, only five witnesses could be cross examined between November 11 to 22, 2019. Thereafter, the department stopped calling any further witnesses for cross examination. 

Since then, four requests have been made seeking right of cross examination of the seven witnesses.

But the IT department has neither accepted nor rejected the requests, which made it clear that the I-T department was likely to rely on unreliable, non-corroborative and non-independent evidence, which, though may be appealable, was likely to adversely affect him and disturb his tax and financial matters for no fault of his but owing to the inaction of the I-T and refusal to follow due process of law, Vijaya Baskar argued.

Also, stressing that the assessments were getting time barred on December 31 and if made without due process of law it was likely to be highly prejudicial to him, the Health Minister sought the court to allow the cross examination of the seven persons, as only based on the statement of these persons the I-T department was trying to make out a case against him.