Sleuths of the Income Tax targeted two leading business groups and conducted raids at 28 of their places spread across the country on Thursday.
The exercise which started in the morning will reportedly continue till Friday before the team members will search all the establishment of the two groups. Sources said that the sleuths already recovered black and unaccounted wealth in large quantity besides records of investment in various places. They also get information about some bank lockers and accounts of the accused which will be now searched once the raids will be completed. Senior officers of the Income Tax Department when contacted on Thursday evening, they just confirmed of raids but said that they will made any disclosure officially once the exercise will be over and they will also go through the documents and belonging recovered.
Reports said that the sleuths of the IT Department were getting information that Hari Prasad Gopi Krishna Jewellers and Shobhit Mohan Das Jewellers who were also reportedly in real estate and other businesses had made huge unaccounted wealth. They subsequently alerted their intelligence wing which further developed the information and confirmed that the two groups had not disclosed a big amount of their earning through various means to the IT Department. Subsequently senior officers planned a raid on both the groups and formed 28 separate teams comprising over over1 25 sleuths of the Department belonging to several sectors besides equal number of local policemen.
Reports said that finally on early Thursday morning, all the teams rushed and started raids simultenously at 28 places spread over half a dozen cities. While 15 establishments and residences were raided by the team in Gorakhpur, 3 each were raided in Mumbai and lucknow while raids were also conducted in Varanasi, Kanpur, Delhi, Kolkata and Gorgaon. Sources said that the team is busy searching the belongings at the time of going to press and will continue the operation on Friday also. The team members were also assisted by the cops of the local police in all the districts so that no untoward incident was reported from anywhere. They also not allowed the family members as well as other staff members to go out of the premises till the exercise will be over.