HC quashes MCOCA proceedings against Antim Tota

Mumbai, Oct 22 (UNI) The Bombay High Court today quashed proceedings, under the stringent MCOCA Act, initiated by Thane rural police, against alleged kingpin of Petrol and Diesel adulteration racket Antim Totla and four of his accomplices.

Wada police had registered an FIR against Totla and Rajesh Ghatalia, Bhaskar Desai, Naresh Vora and Nitin Vora under sections 3(i)(ii), 3(2) and 3(4) of MCOCA for allegedly evading sales tax of crores of rupees.

Totla had moved the high court against the filling of FIR under provisions of MCOCA, saying that evading sales tax did not fall under the act.

Considering an apex court judgement which ruled that, evasion of sales tax was covered by section 63 of the Sales Tax Act and did not attract provisions of MCOCA, a division bench of justice R M S Khandeparkar and V K Tahilramani quashed the proceedings under MCOCA.

The FIR was registered after the sales tax department had found that the gang had evaded sales tax of nearly Rs 46.52 crore by importing Naptha, Kerosene and other such products in the name of companies like Shiva Organics, Progressive Petroleum and Paradise Petrochem etc. and was shown to be sold to various bogus and non-existant companies, whereas the police suspect that the products were utilised for adulterating Petrol and Diesel in Maharashtra and adjoining states.

UNI