Chennai: M Natarajan, the estranged husband of jailed AIADMK leader VK Sasikala, was admitted to hospital on Friday evening, hours after the Madras High Court upheld a trial court order sentencing him to two years imprisonment in a tax evasion case.
Natarajan, 74, had undergone a kidney and liver transplant at a Chennai hospital on October 3. The reason for his latest hospitalization was not immediately clear.
Natarajan was a bureaucrat in the Tamil Nadu government during the late chief minister Jayalalithaa's early tenures. He and Sasikala had been living apart ever since the latter moved into Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence.
Natarajan and three others have been convicted for conspiracy, forgery, cheating and tax evasion and sentenced to two years in jail in a 23-year-old duty evasion case connected to import of a luxury car from the UK.
Dismissing their challenge to the trial order court, the Madras HC on Friday directed the lower court to secure the accused and remand them to judicial custody to undergo remaining period of the sentence, if any.
The case related to the import of a Toyota Lexus car in 1994, declaring it as a used vehicle and thereby allegedly evading tax to the tune of Rs 1.06 crore.
The CBI and Enforcement Directorate had registered separate cases against Natarajan and three others after it was found that the documents presented by them were fabricated.
According to CBI, Natarajan, V Bhaskaran, Yogesh Balakrishnan and Sujaritha Sundararajan substituted the original sale invoice with a photocopy of an invoice fabricated by changing the vehicle's manufacturing date to July 1993.
They cleared the car under transfer of residence provision, and thereby caused a of Rs 1.06 crore to the exchequer by way of short levy, penalty and redemption fine, the CBI said.
(With agency inputs)
Comments
0 comment