MD of firm which co-organised Vadfest held for evading excise duty, gets interim bail

That the company was a key organiser of Vadfest was not mentioned in the bail plea.

Amit Bhatnagar

The Central Excise Department Monday arrested Amit Bhatnagar, MD of Vadodara-based Diamond Power Infrastructure, main organiser of Vadfest, for evading excise duty worth Rs 40 crore. He was later granted interim bail on a bond of Rs 25,000. His bail application said his company had signed several contracts in the Vibrant Gujarat Summit.

Bhatnagar was produced before the court of Additional Senior Civil Judge J K Prajapati, with the counsel for Central Excise Jaiprakash Bhatt seeking his custody. Defence counsel Kaushik Bhatt submitted a bail application in which Bhatnagar pleaded not guilty and said he was willing to pay the default amount. The bail application stated, “Our company is an established name in the business with offices in Savli and Vadodara… we have also entered into several contracts during the Vibrant programme organised by the Government of Gujarat.”

That the company was a key organiser of Vadfest was not mentioned in the bail plea. The application further said he had presented a cheque towards the outstanding amount to the Excise department, which he pleaded be accepted to cancel out the default that cropped due to “accounts misunderstanding”. Bhatnagar’s counsel argued that his client had no “malicious intention” in not paying the excise duty.

The counsel for Central Excise contended that, “It appears that M/s Diamond Power Infrastructure has wrongly taken and utilised Caveat Credit on the strength of mere invoices of goods namely transmission tower materials used by M/s Archon Engicon Ltd, Santej and M/s Accord Industries Ltd, Por-Ramangamdi, without actual receipt and consumption… Amit Bhatnagar, Being the managing director of the unit was directly responsible for purchases and actively looking after activities… In his statement recorded on 13.11.14, he tried to mislead the investigation by stating that he is only responsible for the PR and HR works of M/s DPIL… scrutiny revealed that he is…responsible for day to day functioning of the company…”

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