Ranchi: Income Tax sleuths on Wednesday seized about Rs 70 crore in cash from a contractor from his house at Jharia in Dhanbad district, a senior IT official said. As per Additional Director, IT, Ajit Srivastav An IT team seized the cash from coal contractor Lal Babu Singh’s residence. Singh is a contractor with the Bharat Coking Coal Limited.
This is the largest ever cash haul made by the I-T department in one operation. Till now, the largest cash recovery was about Rs 44 crore that was seized in Delhi earlier this year. According to sources, the I-T teams stumbled across a number of bank accounts and after simultaneous search of lockers in the district and other places the huge cash was seized.
The department has also found that the accounts were being held in the names of various relatives and in some cases in the names of servants of the business firm that was searched.
A number of instances of fake PAN cards and false documents pertaining to transactions have been recovered during the searches which are still on.
The Jharia coal field lies in the Damodar River Valley and is notorious for illegal mining by the coal mafia and the department had initiated the search after inputs in this regard, the official said.
From the seizure it is clear that the holes in the present system are too big to be plugged in the near future; while the more affluent are choosing foreign banks this gentleman preferred to hold the cash; perhaps because of the present situation i.e. the foreign accounts are being debated in Parliament.