The Central Bureau of Investigation on Thursday searched the residential premises of Senthil Valavaen, Additional Commissioner, GST-Chennai Additional, and S. Sridhar, the then Assistant Commissioner, Directorate-General of Central Excise Intelligence, Chennai.
The searches were part of the investigations into the multi-crore gutkha scam.
The agency had registered a case against unknown officials of the Central and State governments in the scam though some officials identified with their designations were listed as beneficiaries of bribes in the book of accounts maintained by the manufacturer of the MDM brand of gutkha.
The searches commenced early on Thursday and concluded late in the evening, a CBI official said, without elaborating on the seizures.
According to police sources, the Directorate-General of GST Intelligence had, in early 2017, registered a case of duty evasion and conducted an in-depth investigation into allegations of bribery involving senior officials of the Central Excise, including one based out of New Delhi, and even collected excise duty to the tune of about ₹9 crore from the gutkha manufacturer.
A few officials, whose involvement in the alleged scam was prima facie established, were shifted out. However, the matter was not referred to the CBI which is the prosecuting agency under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, when it comes to Central government employees.
Excise duty evasion
The allegation is that the then Central Excise officials who held positions listed in the book of accounts facilitated evasion of excise duty which the manufacturer of the banned gutkha later paid “voluntarily” to the Government of India. The Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption, which investigated the case before it was transferred to the CBI by the Madras High Court, had named two middle-level officials among 17 persons as accused in the scam.
Last month, the CBI’s Anti-Corruption-III Unit based in New Delhi conducted searches on the residential premises of Tamil Nadu Director-General of Police T.K. Rajendran, former Chennai Police Commissioner S. George and others and subsequently arrested six suspects, including government officials. Investigators are coordinating with Income Tax Department and other agencies to collect technical and material evidence to fix others involved in the case, sources added.