The Income Tax (IT) Department officials raids out a rather clever strategy to recover black money from high profile businesspersons that remains wrapped up in their homes. The IT department officials posed themselves as COVID-19 warriors and entered the houses, ultimately raiding them.
The incident took place in Madhya Pradesh’s Bhopal when 150 IT representatives raided 20 houses in the early hours of August 20th. Groups of several IT department officials and police personnel from the Special Armed Forces (SAF), pretended to be the COVID-19 warriors and reached the concerned business groups’ homes. To make the plan foolproof, they even stuck notes on their cars that read, “Government of Madhya Pradesh, Health Department COVID-19 team welcomes you.”
The raid helped uncover close to 100 properties and assets worth crores of rupees. This includes land ownership of two cricket grounds along with properties in other regions of Bhopal and its adjoining district, Sehore, according to sources. They further said that cash in the value of Rs 1 crore was also recovered and seized from them.
Interestingly, Raghavendra Singh Tomar, who is the owner of one of the two business houses that were getting raided, has ties with a BJP leader. This leader is a rather powerful entity and serves in the Shivraj Singh Chouhan government as a cabinet minister at the moment.
He belongs to the Gwalior-Chambal area and according to reports, the minister had a major part in bringing down the government of Congress. The Kamal Nath headed cabinet functioned for hardly 15 months before falling in March 2020.
Taking a dig at the cabinet minister who openly regarded Raghavendra Singh Tomar to be his brother some time back, the Congress spokesperson Narendra Saluja took to Twitter and wrote, “This is nothing but a move to limit the rising stature of a cabinet minister. Recently the same minister publicly admitted Raghvendra Singh Tomar was like his younger brother. Now the BJP needs to clarify the minister’s relations with MrTomar.”
Retaliating to the remarks and questions from the opposition, the spokesperson for the ruling party BJP, Rajneesh Agarwal disregarded the entire link of the cabinet minister to the raid, calling it a duty of the IT officials. He tweeted saying, “The Income Tax department is doing its job as per law, but the Congress is making false accusations just to defame BJP politicians.”
According to the sources, these raids can prove beneficial in providing the details on connections with power-driven politicians, police officers, and administration officials. Uncovering the illegal assets bought by wealthy people could also be witnessed. This in turn can help in controlling the ever-increasing growth of corruption in the country.
