Surat: The Surat district and sessions court on Wednesday rejected bail plea of city BJP leader and former income tax officer PVS Sarma (56) who was arrested in connection with the cheating and forgery case in November last week.
Sarma along with two others is alleged to have been involved in forging documents to show inflated circulation figures of local Gujarati and English daily newspapers to get advertisements. He is also accused of showing purchase of raw materials by making false entries and preparing forged documents of purchase bills/ vouchers in the name of many non-existing companies.
The investigating officer in his affidavit opposing Sarma’s bail stated that Sarma and others had cheated private as well as government agencies to the tune of crores of rupees.
Sarma’s lawyer had argued that his client had served the Income-tax Department for years and has recently joined “Satyam Times” (daily newspaper) as one of the directors and had no role in the case. He further claimed that Sarma had not forged or created bogus documents for showing inflated numbers of copies of their newspaper in circulation.
Public prosecutor N L Sukhadwala opposed the bail plea and submitted that the accused not only showed false entries, but had committed cheated government agencies of Rs 70 lakh and private agencies to the tune of Rs 2 crore.
The court while rejecting bail also took into consideration the fact that a probe was also being carried out by income tax authorities with regard to allegations of disproportionate assets amassed by Sarma.