Income Tax department seizes cash, jewellery after raids on two Ludhiana real estate developers

NEW DELHI: The Income Tax department has seized over Rs 4 crore worth jewellery and cash after it raided two real estate developers of Ludhiana in Punjab about two weeks back, the CBDT said on Saturday.

The raids were conducted on November 16 and 40 premises of the un-identified groups were covered. The major finding after the operation against the groups is about the receipt of unaccounted cash on property transactions, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement.

"Documentary evidences in the nature of 'agreement to sale' (known as 'biyana' in local parlance) for certain properties have been seized. These documents indicate that the 'agreement to sale' for plots has been executed at much higher amount or rate as compared to the consideration disclosed in registered sale deed of the plot," the policy-making body for the tax department said.

It claimed "incriminating" documents in the form of loose sheets, excel sheets showing calculation of receipt of funds for certain property transactions, soft data, chats from mobile phones of the persons concerned, etc. was recovered.

Probe shows, it said, that unaccounted cash expenditure has been incurred on construction of residential house of one of the key persons. "In one of the groups, defaults on compliances for the provisions of tax deduction at source have been detected with regard to payments made to the sellers of the land, etc," it said.

The statement said that the searches have resulted in seizure of unaccounted cash of about Rs 2 crore besides foreign exchange and unexplained jewellery of about Rs 2.30 crore.