Delhi High Court Allows Further Inspection Of CPU Seized From Advocate's Office, With Mandatory Presence Of Parties

The Delhi High Court has issued notice in the application by the GST Department seeking the handing over of the parsed hard drives of the seized Central Processing Unit (CPU) of an advocate, which is in possession of the IT Officers of the Court, for further examination.

In doing so, the Court has instructed the presence of representatives from both sides, including a Court officer, and directed the submission of parsed data and hard drives to the Court.

A Bench of Justice Prathiba M. Singh and Justice Shail Jain, examining whether permission ought to be granted for a further inspection of the CPU as only partial examination of the CPU could be done, observed that “Since the intention of the Court at that stage was also to ensure that the relevant data is made fully available to the Petitioner, as also to the GST Department, the Court is inclined to allow the prayer in the present application, at this stage, to the extent that the analysis and the parsing can be done in the Directorate General of GST Intelligence, National Forensic Sciences University, Ministry of Home Affairs Lab, in order to expedite the analysis.”

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing on behalf of the GST Department, submitted that the process of parsing requires specialized technical machinery to enable proper analysis of the data.

The matter pertains to a search operation conducted by the GST Department at an Advocate's office, pursuant to an investigation into one of the clients, Martkarma Technology Pvt. Ltd., an online gaming company having the domain name '11winner.com'.

In continuance of an interim order whereby the Delhi HC, considering attorney-client privilege, enlisted certain safeguards regarding the seizure and inspection of an advocate's computer, the Delhi High Court clarified that “GST officials ought not to be permitted to open the CPU or computer of any advocate without his presence and consent, inasmuch as the same could lead to serious breach of confidentiality and attorney-client privilege.” The High Court issued directions in relation to the examination of the CPU, viz. presence of representatives, data cloning, limited access, sealing of CPU.

The GST Department has filed its affidavit containing confidential information relating to the ongoing investigation against the gaming company that is stated to have engaged the Petitioner for rendering various professional and legal services. In this vein, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta submitted that the Petitioner was, in fact, gaining 0.7% of the revenue which was being collected by the online gaming company. On the basis of data collected from the CPU, it is further submitted that there are various employees and other officials of the online gaming company, including directors, who have recorded statements to the effect of involvement of the Petitioner in running the online gaming company.

Appearance: Senior Advocates Avi Singh, Kirti Uppal, Mohit Mathur, Sachin Puri with Advocates Kunal Malhotra, Animesh Gaba, Nalinaksha Singh, Akshat Sharma, Manish Dhankani, Ishan Parashar, Arjun Singh and N. Raj Tyagi appeared on behalf of the Petitioner, whereas Revenue was represented by Solicitor General Tushar Mehta with ASG S.V. Raju and SSCs Aditya Singla, P.C. Aggarwal, Amit Khatri, Arunima Dwivedi and Advocates Arya Suresh Nair, Dhananjay Gautam, Annam Venkatesh, Shaurya Sarin, Harsh Paul Singh, Aditi Andley and Aryansh Shukla.