Commercial tax officer gets 3 yr jail in bribery case

Rajkot: An assistant commercial tax commissioner was sentenced to three years imprisonment by a court in Gondal in a bribery case on Friday.
Mahesh Gadhavi had accepted Rs 20,000 from Hitesh Savalia, an advocate on December 18, 2008. Gadhavi had demanded Rs 50,000 from Savalia for providing him tax payer identification number (TIN) for the company that he represented.
Gadhavi wanted some more documents from Savalia when he submitted his application to obtain TIN and said that if the latter was unable to provide the documents, he will then have to pay additional amount. Gadhavi then said that if Savli wanted to escape paying more, then he would have to pay him a bribe. Gadhavi first asked for Rs 50,000, which he later scaled down to Rs 20,000. Meanwhile, Savalia approached the Rajkot anti-corruption bureau (ACB).
“The ACB laid a trap, asking Savalia to go to Gadhavi’s office and pay him the bribe. The sleuths caught Gadhavi redhanded while accepting the money,” said Ghanshyam Dobaria, assistant public prosecutor of Gondal additional sessions court.
However, Gadhavi sought a conditional bail from the court to move Gujarat high court. The court granted him bail.