BENGALURU: Three Infosys employees involved in the functioning of income tax department’s centralised processing centre (CPC) have been arrested for collecting commission from taxpayers to expedite the refund process. The arrests were made on the basis of a complaint lodged with Electronics City police by an IRS officer and I-T director Sibichen K Mathew on Monday.
The arrested are Renukakunta Kalyan Kumar, 26, Deveeswar Reddy, 28, and Prakash, 26 — all residents of Electronics City. The trio was working at CPC, where all IT returns are directed, validated, scanned, digitised, processed and printed before refunds are initiated. Infosys is the managed services provider for the execution of CPC.
Internal investigations by the IT department revealed the accused were taking advantage of the time being taken to process the returns, which can go up to 60 days, and were directly contacting taxpayers with an assurance to reduce the processing time to less than seven working days.
Rs 3 lakh recovered
The three men were charging 4 per cent commission on the amount refunded. Police sources told STOI they suspected the accused have collected over Rs 15 lakh as commission. “We have recovered Rs 3 lakh from them so far. We aren’t sure since when have they been operating and how much money they have made,” a police officer said, while pointing out that cases have been booked under sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.
“What is more baffling is how the accused succeeded in accessing the personal information of taxpayers and brazenly contacted the latter,” an officer said. Tthe accused teamed up to make a quick buck and targeted those who pay hefty tax amounts and were expecting returns above Rs 10 lakh.
Police said Kalyan had access to the contact numbers, addresses and other details of taxpayers . He passed on the information to the others, who would approach the taxpayers through phone calls and text messages. But their luck ran out when a person, who denied their services, alerted I-T officers about a possible data breach. The informant, who had recorded the audio conversation with the accused, shared the same with the department. The IT officers, who swung into action, started joining the dots before approaching police.
Joshi Srinath Mahadev, DCP (southeast), told TOI the accused have been arrested and sent to judicial custody. Further probe is under way.
The arrested are Renukakunta Kalyan Kumar, 26, Deveeswar Reddy, 28, and Prakash, 26 — all residents of Electronics City. The trio was working at CPC, where all IT returns are directed, validated, scanned, digitised, processed and printed before refunds are initiated. Infosys is the managed services provider for the execution of CPC.
Internal investigations by the IT department revealed the accused were taking advantage of the time being taken to process the returns, which can go up to 60 days, and were directly contacting taxpayers with an assurance to reduce the processing time to less than seven working days.
Rs 3 lakh recovered
The three men were charging 4 per cent commission on the amount refunded. Police sources told STOI they suspected the accused have collected over Rs 15 lakh as commission. “We have recovered Rs 3 lakh from them so far. We aren’t sure since when have they been operating and how much money they have made,” a police officer said, while pointing out that cases have been booked under sections 406 and 420 of the Indian Penal Code.
“What is more baffling is how the accused succeeded in accessing the personal information of taxpayers and brazenly contacted the latter,” an officer said. Tthe accused teamed up to make a quick buck and targeted those who pay hefty tax amounts and were expecting returns above Rs 10 lakh.
Police said Kalyan had access to the contact numbers, addresses and other details of taxpayers . He passed on the information to the others, who would approach the taxpayers through phone calls and text messages. But their luck ran out when a person, who denied their services, alerted I-T officers about a possible data breach. The informant, who had recorded the audio conversation with the accused, shared the same with the department. The IT officers, who swung into action, started joining the dots before approaching police.
Joshi Srinath Mahadev, DCP (southeast), told TOI the accused have been arrested and sent to judicial custody. Further probe is under way.
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