Romesh Sharma, an alleged front man of underworld don Dawood Ibrahim, was on Monday sentenced to two years' rigorous imprisonment by a court in Delhi for evading income tax and not paying dues amounting to Rs 50 crore in a 12-year-old case.
"Keeping in view the fact and circumstances of the case, I sentence Romesh Sharma to two years RI for evading taxes," Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Kanwaljeet Arora said, slapping a penalty of Rs 3 lakh on him.
The court convicted Sharma, from whose farmhouse I-T officials recovered a helicopter apart from cash, for not depositing dues amounting to Rs 50 crores after holding him guilty under section 276-C(2) and 277 of the Income Tax Act.
On March 28, the court had heard the arguments on the quantum of sentence and reserved its order for Monday.
After the sentence, Sharma's counsel Harish Singh told PTI that 'he would appeal in a higher court against his client's sentence'.
Who is Romesh Sharma?
Sharma's rags-to-riches story reportedly involved money-laundering, killings, flesh trade, and political lobbying.
In the early 1970s, Sharma came to Delhi in search of a living. For a while, he eked out an existence in Sadar Bazaar. But he learnt the tricks of his various trades and the art of survival in Bombay, from the late Vardaraja Mudaliar, one of the city's underworld figures of the time.
After Mudaliar's death, CBI records say, Sharma became a Dawood hitman. The Dubai-based gangster groomed Sharma to be his chief of operations in New Delhi.
Sharma's reputation of a lavish lifestyle -- 19 cars, a huge bungalow fitted with 30 air-conditioners, good food and an unending supply of liquor -- lured the powerful and the influential to his net.
Thus, his guest lists included ministers, bureaucrats, members of Parliament, senior policemen, business representatives, and even some well-known journalists.
In Delhi, Sharma began to deal in millions for senior politicians, keeping a percentage of every transaction for himself. But his main business was dabbling in the city's thriving property trade. He literally grabbed posh bungalows and farmhouses across the capital.
According to CBI records, Sharma was a front man for an export firm linked with a former finance minister.
