Income Tax Department raids more than 50 locations, Rs 94 crore cash found

New Delhi: The Income Tax Department has seized around Rs 94 crore in cash in its ongoing raids on contractors and real estate developers at more than 55 locations in Karnataka, Telangana, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh.

CBDT said that during this raid, Rs 94 crore in cash, gold and diamond jewelery worth Rs 8 crore and 30 luxury watches were seized. The search was started on October 12 and during this period the department also raided 55 premises in Bengaluru and some cities of neighboring states Telangana and Andhra Pradesh as well as in Delhi.

“The searches have resulted in the seizure of unaccounted cash of about Rs 94 crore and gold and diamond jewelery worth more than Rs 8 crore, aggregating to more than Rs 102 crore,” the Central Board of Direct Taxes (SBDT) said in a statement. “Besides, a collection of about 30 luxury foreign wrist watches was recovered from the premises of a private salaried employee,” the CBDT said without disclosing the identity of the accused.

Following the recovery of “unaccounted” cash, a war of words has erupted between Karnataka’s ruling Congress and the opposition BJP on the matter. BJP state president Nalin Kumar Kateel said that this money is related to Congress. Meanwhile, Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has called this allegation baseless. Let us tell you that CBDT makes policies for the Income Tax Department.

Hard copies of documents and digital data have also been seized during the raid. It is clear from this that the accused not only evaded tax but the contractors also under-reported their income by inflating expenses with fake purchases. During the raid, discrepancies were found in Goods Receipt Note (GRN) verification and huge discrepancies were found in many documents. It was claimed that these contractors were also involved in booking expenses for non-commercial purposes.