Jayalalithaa disproportionate assets case: I-T dept includes Deepa and Deepak's names

The Income Tax department, on Monday, March 14, has incorporated the names of J Deepa and J Deepak – the legal heirs of late Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa – in the records relating to the wealth case pending against her, for decades. The move comes after an earlier direction by the Madras High Court. 

A division bench of Justices R Mahadevan and Sathyanarayana Prasad, before which the wealth case came up for further hearing on Monday, adjourned the matter to the first week of April. On December 6, the Madras High Court directed the Income Tax department to file applications bringing in Deepak and Deepa’s names in the records relating to the wealth and income tax cases pending against Jayalalithaa, within two weeks.

Originally, Jayalalithaa owed Rs 10.12 crore towards wealth tax arrears from 1990-91 to 2011-12 and another Rs 6.63 crore as income tax dues from 2005-06 to 2011-12 to the Income Tax (IT) department. Her property at Poes Garden and the ones in Hyderabad had been attached by the department. It had also filed cases against her for the non-payment of the taxes in 1997. 

An aggrieved Jayalalithaa had moved the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, which passed an order in her favour. Challenging this, the IT department filed the present appeals in the High Court. Meanwhile, Jayalalithaa died in December 2016.

Hence, the bench directed the IT department in December last year to include the names of Deepa and Deepak, the niece and nephew of Jayalalithaa respectively, in the records. The High Court had also ruled that the Income Tax Department can begin its proceedings to collect pending tax on the property. 

It is to be noted that Deepa and Deepak had recently secured the keys to Jayalalithaa’s Poes Garden residence Veda Nilayam on December 10.

With PTI inputs