SC dismisses plea challenging HC verdict on power to arrest in GST evasion cases

The Supreme Court Monday dismissed a plea challenging the Telangana High Court verdict that a person can be arrested by the concerned authority in cases of Goods and Service Tax (GST) evasion.

The plea came up for hearing before a vacation bench of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Aniruddha Bose and the apex court said it was not inclined to interfere with the April 18 judgement of the high court.

"Having heard counsel for the petitioner and upon perusing the relevant material, we are not inclined to interfere. The special leave petition is accordingly dismissed," the bench said.

On April 18, the high court had said it was not inclined to grant relief against arrest to the petitioners who had approached it challenging the summons issued by Superintendent (Anti-Evasion) of the Hyderabad GST Commissionerate under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act, 2017 and invocation of penal provisions under the law.

The high court had delivered the verdict which dealing with a batch of petitions filed by some private companies, its top officials and others.

The government had told the high court that petitioners before it were allegedly involved in incorporating several partnership firms and had claimed input tax credit on the basis of certain invoices, without there being any actual physical receipt of goods.

It had alleged that the fraudulent input tax credit claimed by them was to the tune of Rs 224.05 crore.