The CBI has started a probe against three Income-Tax Department officials and nine private people for allegedly facilitating fictitious refunds of Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) deducted for several assesses by misusing system access of senior officers.
The CBI filed an FIR based on a complaint from the Joint Commissioner of Income-Tax, Muzaffarnagar, against three group C officials of the Income Tax Department who allegedly managed to dupe the department by misusing RSA tokens of assessing officers to work out and generate fictitious refunds of TDS. RSA tokens are unique and time-synchronous solutions that automatically change a user’s password every 60 seconds. Following the registration of the FIR, the agency has carried out searches at multiple locations, officials said.
The CBI has named three Income Tax Department officials — Abhay Kant, Saurabh Singh and Rohit Kumar — in connection with the case along with nine beneficiaries of the refunds.
The case has been registered by the Anti-Corruption Branch of the CBI under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) Sections relating to criminal conspiracy, forgery, cheating and criminal breach of trust besides criminal misconduct under the Prevention of Corruption Act, besides provisions of the Information Technology Act.
The tax department has alleged that the officials misused the RSA tokens of assessing officers to work out and authenticate generation of fictitious refunds payable to 11 assesses, on the system, and got the refunds worth over Rs 1.39 crore between August 1, 2020 and August 25, 2021 till the fraud was detected.