Ahmedabad:
A 75-year-old man is fighting a case in court to get Rs14 lakh as reward due to him from the excise department. He says the reward is due to him for providing secret information against city-based industries.
Justice HN Devani has reserved the judgment for next week.
The issue began in 1992 when one Harilal Patva passed on information about excise duty evasion by an Odhav-based company. Following the tip off, the excise department started a search operation on the company and unearthed duty evasion worth Rs1.70 crore. The department then lodged a case against the company.
Later, the business settled the matter with the excise department and paid Rs80.09 lakh to the department in 1997. Thereafter, according to norms of the excise department, Patva put a claim of Rs16 lakh (20% of amount recovered as duty from the business) as reward.
The department released Rs2 lakh in his favour in 2005, after repeated efforts on part of Patva.
He again put a claim for the rest of his reward money but in 2008, the excise department refused to release the rest. The department rejected Patva's claim on the grounds that they could not identify Patva as an actual informer as the officer to whom he had passed on the information had passed away. The department also said that another officer involved in the case had left service. Patva then approached the Gujarat high court for the rest of his reward -Rs14 lakh.
Patva submitted in the court that excise department is bound to pay 20% of the actual recovered amount of duty as he is the one who had given information about the duty evasion. He said that as he was already paid Rs2 lakh, he is entitled to the rest.
Interestingly, the excise department in its reply before the Gujarat high court stated that they could not identify Patva as actual informer as the officer who dealt with him had passed away and the file of this particular case could not be traced. Therefore they cannot release rest of the amount.
YN Ravani, counsel for the excise department, said that according to two Supreme Court judgment, informers have no fundamental or statutory right to get a reward. Therefore they cannot file a petition before the court, Ravani argued.
However, Ruturaj Meena, counsel for Patva said that informers give tip-offs to the department putting their lives at risk. There is no issue of identification of Patva as the informer in the said case as he has already been paid Rs2 lakh as reward in 2005 for the same, Meena argued.
Copyright restricted. Under licence from
www.3dsyndication.com