Kathmandu, March 24:

After failing to receive the original case-file on a tax case from the Inland Revenue Department (IRD) despite 12 months of effort, the Supreme Court (SC), a few days ago, sought help from attorney-general Laxmi Bahadur Nirala to help it gain access to the file.

In the past 12 months, the SC had written four letters, urging the IRD to produce the original case-file on businessman Badri Nath Tondon vs Revenue Tribunal Nepalgunj tax case.

“Responding to our request, the attorney-general wrote us back yesterday, saying that he had written to the revenue office to send the file to the apex court,” an SC official said.

“The delay in producing the documents shows how government authorities have been dilly-dallying to act even over Supreme Court orders,” he added, “We had to approach the chief legal adviser of the government to obtain a case file.” The court sought Nirala’s help for making an arrangement to submit the original file of the case to settle the case that has been pending in the SC for a few years. For the fourth time in a period of 12 months, the apex court had ordered the IRD to produce the files, but to no avail.