Mumbai: The Bombay High Court on Wednesday asked
the Income Tax authorities to file a status report within four
weeks on its probe into the finances of the persons who were
allotted flats in the controversial Adarsh Housing Society.
A division bench of Justices Sharad Bobde and V K
Tahilramani was hearing a bunch of public interest litigations
regarding the Adarsh scam, where environmental and civic norms
were allegedly flouted while granting certain concessions to
the 31-storey skyrise in South Mumbai.
Praveen Vategaokar, who has filed a PIL seeking
inquiry under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act into how
the 100-odd members of the society financed the purchase of
flats, pointed out that in six cases, the IT department closed
the inquiry, without giving reasons.
The bench therefore asked the IT lawyer to produce a
report on the probe, stating the reasons for closing the
inquiry in these cases and status of the probe in others,
within four weeks.
The six cases mentioned by Vategaokar include that of
former IAS officer and MP, Shrinivas Patil.
A Mehta, the counsel of Simpreet Singh, another
petitioner, demanded that the high court monitor the probe as
CBI has not made any progress after taking over the case in
February this year, barring filing six reports in the court.
He also stated that in a related criminal case, where
CBI was probing missing of a file related to Adarsh from the
Maharashtra Urban Development Department, no chargesheet has
been filed yet, though three clerks of the concerned
department were arrested.
PTI
