The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Wednesday filed a corruption case against nine top officials of Income Tax department after conducting nearly 17 raids all over the country. The corrupt officials included I-T chief of New Delhi, SK Mittal. During the raids, the items that were recovered included property documents and ₹16 lakhs cash.
As per some CBI sources, residential and official premises of the income tax officials as well as a chartered accountant Sanjay Bhandari were searched during the nation-wide searches that covered 17 locations including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Khammam in Telangana.
The sources said the CBI has seized documents related to properties worth ₹2.6 crore, ₹16 lakh in cash, 4.25 kg of gold jewellery and 13 kg of silver items during raids at the premises of one of the officials.
The sources also claimed that from another official Fixed Deposit Receipts worth ₹68 lakh were recovered. Highlighting that these were initial recoveries, they said the searches are still underway and more recoveries could be made in the particular matter.
Besides Delhi I-T Principal Commissioner Mittal, the CBI registered cases against Income Additional Commissioner (exemption) Bangalore, T N Prakash, Deputy Commissioner (Exemption) Chennai, R V Haroon Prasad, Deputy Commissioner (Investigation) Chennai, S Murali Mohan, Commissioner (audit-2) Chennai, Vijayalakshmi, Additional Commissioner Mumbai, S Pandian, Commissioner (DR) ITAT Mumbai, G Lakshmi Baraprasad, Additional Director General (systems-4) Ghaziabad, Vikram Gaur and Additional Director (investigation) Mumbai, Rajendra Kumar, CBI sources added.
Among others, chartered accountant Sanjay Bhandari and his sons Shreyans and Divyang are also accused in the case, the sources added.
It has been alleged that these officials were availing favours including stays at five-star hotels, conveyance in the form of luxury cars and flight travel at the expense of the chartered accountant and his sons and helping him in the cases of his clients as a quid pro quo.
