Income Tax Department conducts raids in Jaipur, recovers antique items

The Income Tax (I-T) Department conducted raids in Jaipur and recovered not only unaccounted income of Rs 1,400 crores so far, but also precious jewels and antique items. The police will investigate the source of the procured antique items, said city Police Commissioner Anand Srivastava on Saturday.

"We will start our procedure after I-T Department completes their work and provide the inputs. As per the newspaper reports the assessee had sold antique articles to foreigners. Now we have to investigate the matter as selling of such articles is prohibited by law in the country," Srivastava told reporters.

"If antique items are discovered in a raid, it is the police's responsibility to investigate its source and also to investigate whether these antiques are registered in related department or not," he said.

According to a statement issued by Department of Revenue, Ministry of Finance, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), the raids and survey operations have been carried out at various premises of the three firms in the city, involving one jeweller and two real-estate colonisers and developers.

"The jeweller group was a multi-venture activity group, which is engaged in the business of precious stones, jewellery, antiques, handicrafts, carpets and textiles. During the raids, a concealed cavity was discovered by the I-T team along with the documents relating to Benami property amounting to Rs 15 crore from the secret chamber," the CBDT said in a statement.

The department added that the jeweller had denied maintenance of any stock register, the same was unearthed from the secret cavity. The alpha-numeric secret code mentioned on each item had the actual sale price embedded in it and the team is working on cracking the code. Two hard-disks and pen-drive were also found from there containing details of various items in coded form, along with the photographs of the items.

The second group was a prominent builder, developer and coloniser.

"A plethora of incriminating documents and digital data, in the form of unaccounted receipts, unexplained development expenses, unexplained assets, cash loans and advances, on-money receipts were found and seized. Total unaccounted transactions amounting to Rs 650 crore have been detected, so far in this group," the CBDT said.

The last group is a builder and developer who was engaged in the development of commercial centres, farmhouses, townships and residential enclaves.

The search revealed that the group had taken over a real-estate project at the Airport Plaza by showing an investment of Rs 1 lakh only in the books of account whereas, the WIP pertaining to the project, reflected in the balance sheet was found to be about Rs 133 crore. The substantial income from various affordable housing schemes run by the group had not been disclosed in the returns of income.

"The search operations are still continuing and further investigations are underway," added the department.

( With inputs from ANI )