more-inThe Income Tax department has supported the plea of DMK MLA J. Anbazhagan for a CBI probe into the gutkha scam, saying documents recovered by it from a gutkha manufacturer had revealed payments to Ministers and police officers to prevent action from being taken against the sale of the banned product in the State. He said a CBI probe must be ordered in the case at least in the interest of safeguarding people’s health. Advocate General Vijay Narayan said the stage of ordering a CBI probe into the case had already been crossed since a Division Bench had rejected a similar plea by another litigant and instead ordered a probe under the supervision of the State Vigilance Commissioner. The court could order a CBI probe at this stage only if it was convinced that the vigilance officials had not conducted the probe in the right direction and not otherwise, he contended. He accused I-T officials of not providing to the Vigilance Commissioner the original documents and hard disks recovered by them from gutkha manufacturers.

Source: The Hindu January 23, 2018 18:33 UTC