The Income Tax Department initiated search and seizure operations on two major real estate developers of Ludhiana.
The official release by the Ministry of Finance, the operations were initiated on November 16 and the search action covered around 40 premises in Ludhiana.
"The major finding emanating from these search and seizure operations of both the groups is about the receipt of unaccounted cash by these groups by way of on-money on property transactions," the Ministry said.
During the course of search proceedings, Income Tax Department recovered and seized documentary evidence in the nature of 'agreement to sale', (popularly known as 'Biyana' in local parlance), for certain properties.
"These documents indicate that the 'agreement to sale' for plots has been executed at a much higher amount/rate as compared to the consideration disclosed in the registered sale deed of the plot. Further, incriminating documents such as loose sheets, excel sheets showing the calculation of receipt of on-money of certain property transactions, soft data, chats from mobile phones of the persons concerned, etc. have also been recovered. A preliminary analysis of these evidence clearly indicates the receipt of unaccounted cash by way of on-money on property transactions," the release said.
Besides, certain other corroborative evidence supporting the receipt of on-money have also been gathered, it added.
Investigations have also revealed that unaccounted cash expenditure has been incurred on the construction of a 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, the Ministry said.
The search action has resulted in the seizure of unaccounted cash of about Rs 2.00 crore besides foreign exchange, and unexplained jewellery of about Rs 2.30 crore.
Further investigations into the case are in progress.
( With inputs from ANI )
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