Kanpur: SNK pan masala owner, director held for evasion of Rs 50 crore GST

KANPUR: A team of director general GST Intelligence raided the factory of SNK Pan Masala Group and arrested its owner Naveen Kurele and director Avinash Modi on Tuesday.
The arrest was made with regard to GST evasion of about Rs 50 crores. After the implementation of the GST, it is being said that this arrest was probably the first case wherein an owner of a big pan masala group and its director were nailed in the city.
Both of them have been arrested under Section 132 of GST.
The raids started on Monday, wherein separate teams of DG GSTI swooped down on the establishments of pan masala companies across 15 districts of the state including Kanpur.
Kurele and Modi were kept in the lock-up of Kakadeo police station on Tuesday night.
They were taken to the court on Wednesday afternoon, where the officials of GST Intelligence placed an application for their transit remand. GST officers will now take them to Meerut after procuring their transit remand.
This campaign was launched after raids at a Delhi company recently. From there the team found evidence of supply of packaging material without bills, after which several pan masala factories, including SNK were raided.
The Delhi company supplies most of the raw material to the SNK Pan Masala company. When the intelligence wing of GST matched the plastic packing material supplied by the Delhi company with the books of pan masala company, it came to fore that there is a huge gap between the input and output. After which the team arrested both Kurele and Modi.
A city police official said that GST Intelligence officials arrested Naveen Kurele and Avinash Modi of SNK Pan Masala Group late on Tuesday evening and brought them to Kakadeo police station after a medical examination in the night.
“After the permission of police commissioner Asim Kumar Arun, Kakadeo Inspector Kunj Bihari Mishra kept the duo in lock-up for a night. On Wednesday morning, the officers of GST Intelligence prepared all the papers from the GST office located at Sarvodaya Nagar. After this, they were taken to Kakadeo police station around 12 noon and the police took them into custody. Later, at around 12:15, the officers took them to the court,” he said further.
Inspector Kakadeo Kunj Bihari Mishra told reporters that officers of the director general GST Intelligence had brought pan masala traders to the police station on Tuesday night.
“As there is no lock-up at the GST office here, the GST officials asked them to keep the duo in the lock-up of the police station. After permission from the city police commissioner, both were kept in the lock-up and were later handed over to the officers when they arrived in the morning,” said Mishra further.
The GST team will now take both of them with them to Meerut, he added.
To recall, the Central and state income tax department had raided the SNK Pan Masala Group recently. Company’s investment in the real estate business also came to fore in that raid. Undisclosed funds of about Rs 400 crore were detected which were brought into business through shell companies.