The Income Tax sleuths on Thursday carried out massive searches in at least 100 locations of diamond traders in Mumbai, Surat, Jaipur and Kolkata, in a reported bid to uncover fake billing of diamond sales and purchase.
Teams of officers from the IT department zeroed in on the Opera House, the Pancharatna Building and Prasad Chambers here and inspected the books of accounts and other documents. The IT officials also carried out at another diamond trading hub at Bandra-Kurla Complex (BKC), while some traders in Goregaon and Zaveri Bazaar were also searched.
Similar searches were also carried out simultaneously in three major diamond trading hubs in the country, Surat, Kolkata and Jaipur. The raids sent shock waves through the diamond trading community across the country. However, there was no official word from the IT as to the nature of searches and raids carried out by its officials all through the day.
Informed sources said that the traders raided were basically intermediaries of diamond trading and export business.
Incidentally, the searches and raids by the IT officials came three days after BJP’s prime ministerial candidate and Gujarat CM Narendra Modi was weighed in silver by the members of the Diamond Merchants’ Association, at a function marking the inauguration of Diamond Hall at the Bharat Diamond Bourse at Bandra-Kurla Complex in north-east Mumbai. At the function, Modi had himself apprehended that the IT officials might
target the diamond merchants in the coming days.