Bombay High Court granted interim protection to Sunil Biyani, non-executive director of Future Group, in a Rs 1,200-crore GST scam case, restraining arrest for one week. Justice N. R. Borkar held that without Section 69 CGST arrest order, bail premature.
MUMBAI: In a significant development for Future Group’s Sunil Biyani, the Bombay High Court granted him protection from arrest in connection with a Rs 1,200 crore GST scam case. The court ordered that Biyani could not be arrested for a week following the notification of this order. Sunil Biyani serves as a non-executive director of Future Group.
Justice N.R. Borkar, who presided over the case, noted that the Central GST authority had not issued any order necessitating Biyani’s arrest.
The Court said,
“In absence of such an order under Section 69 of the CGST Act, Biyani cannot be arrested. In that view of the matter, at this stage, the present Anticipatory Bail Application cannot be entertained,”
This ruling followed Biyani’s appeal to the High Court after the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) summoned him for questioning.
The investigation centers on an extensive scheme involving fraudulent input tax credits and false invoicing, which has resulted in a total GST liability of over Rs 200 crores. The issue pertains to input tax credits and invoices that exist only on paper, without corresponding actual business activities.
The DGGI clarified through an affidavit that the case includes overseas transfers totaling Rs 1,208.77 crore, with around Rs 50 crore in ineligible input tax credits and Rs 217.57 crore in GST deemed payable.
Biyani was listed as a director at Alphaneon Studioz and Pindflix Entertainment, where approximately Rs 664.70 crore of these remittances are alleged to have been directed.
In his plea for pre-arrest bail, Biyani pointed out that he had resigned via email from the relevant company in July 2023. He claimed that Alphaneon had wrongfully implicated him through fraudulent corporate documents.
He asserted that custodial questioning was essential due to the scale of the suspected tax evasion, the complexity of multi-layered financial transactions, and the presence of crucial digital evidence.
Although he expressed a willingness to cooperate and provide written responses to the summons, Biyani denied any involvement in the alleged fraudulent activities.