Bhubaneswar: Income-Tax raid at the properties linked to liquor firm, its owners, and other businesses belonging to them continued for the sixth day in Odisha’s Balangir on Monday. Today morning, I-T officials raided the premises of Baldev Sahu Infra Pvt Ltd at Sudpada in Bolangir.
Meanwhile, the cash seizure in the income-tax department’s searches against an Odisha-based distillery company, owned by a Congress Rajya Sabha MP’s family, has been calculated at Rs 351 crore after five days of counting and is the “highest-ever” haul in a single action by any probe agency in the country, official sources said on Sunday.
The premises of the Congress Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand, Dhiraj Prasad Sahu, in Ranchi and other places, were also covered during the searches by the department. The marathon raids against Boudh Distillery Private Limited, its promoters, and others entered the sixth day on Monday. The raids were launched on December 6 by I-T personnel on charges of tax evasion and “off-the-book” transactions.
The sources said that Rs 351 crore cash has been counted and the process has ended.
The counting involved nine teams of about 80 people from the tax department and various banks, working in shifts in a 24×7 cycle.
Another team of 200 officials, including security personnel, drivers, and other staff, joined in after the taxman found 10 almirahs stuffed with cash apart from some other locations.
As many as 200 bags and trunks were used to transport the cash for depositing it in various bank branches in Odisha, the sources said.
The department believes that the entire cache of currency is “unaccounted” money earned from cash sales of country liquor by the business group, distributors, and others.
It is the highest-ever cash seizure made by an agency in the country as part of an action against a single group and entities linked to it, the sources had said.
However, it was not clear what amount of cash and other documents were seized from Sahu’s house in Ranchi.
The maximum cache of currency, largely in Rs 500 denominations, was recovered from the premises of the company in Bolangir district.
