Supreme Court: In an appeal arising out of impugned order of Rajasthan High Court imposing a condition to deposit Rs. 2 crores for grant of bail in offence of evading tax, the Division- Bench of S. Ravindra Bhat and Dipankar Datta, JJ., set aside the condition requiring the appellant to deposit Rs. 2 crores for bail.
In the matter at hand, the High Court imposed a condition of deposit of Rs. 2 crores upon the appellant, for the grant of bail. The appellant was accused of evading tax and deriving the benefit of input-tax credit to the tune of Rs. 11.3 crores. Aggrieved by the decision of the High Court, the appellant has appealed before the Court.
The Court said that such onerous condition cannot be imposed for bail, and deprecated the condition set by the High Court. Placing its reliance on Subhash Chouhan v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 110, the Court set aside the condition requiring the appellant to deposit Rs. 2 crores for the purpose of granting bail for an offence under Section 132 of Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017. Further, the Court allowed the appellant to seek withdrawal of the amount already deposited for the bail, but the appellant shall comply with other imposed conditions necessary for the bail.
Thus, the Court allowed the appeal and ordered pending applications to be disposed of.
[Yashik Jindal v. Union of India, 2023 SCC OnLine SC 417, decided on 28-03-2023]
