SURAT: A Surat city BJP leader and former I-T officer P V S Sarma was booked on Saturday on charges of forgery and cheating. Sarma allegedly forged documents to show high circulation of two newspapers to get advertisement from government and private parties.
The complaint was lodged by an Income Tax deputy director investigation Pammayya K D.
Sarma had last month alleged huge financial scam during demonetisation and claimed involvement of jewellers and I-T officials in it. Soon after his allegations, his residence and offices were raided by the I-T sleuths.
Based on a complaint filed by Pammayya, Sarma and his partner Sitaram Adukiya were booked by the police under various sections of Indian Penal Code including 465 (forgery), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (use of forged documents), 420 (cheating), and others.
Sarma was vice-president of city BJP unit that was dissolved recently after the appointment of new city BJP chief.
During raid on Sarma’s home, office and premises of his associates on October 21 by 12 teams of I-T sleuths I-T officials gathered various documents related to the Gujarati and English language newspapers that Sarma and Adukiya run as directors.
I-T officials found that the accused had claimed higher circulation of copies of his newspapers using forged documents to get advertisements from Directorate of Advertisement and Visual Publicity and private parties.
During inquiry, I-T officials also searched premises of individuals like Kaushal Khandeliya which are associated with Sarma and found suspicious financial transactions related to Sarma, Pammayya claimed in the FIR.