New Delhi: The Income Tax (IT) department has made cash recoveries of more than Rs 200 crore from various locations in Odisha and Jharkhand. Raids were conducted Friday at the premises of Boudh Distilleries Pvt Ltd (BDPL), besides locations allegedly linked to Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dhiraj Prasad Sahu in Ranchi and Lohardaga.
A significant amount of cash, stuffed in bags, was retrieved from Balangir and Sambalpur, according to reports in sections of the media which quoted senior I-T department officials as saying that the matter pertains to an alleged case of tax evasion.
Visuals are doing the rounds on social media of bundles of cash stacked in an almirah, reportedly recovered during the raids.
“Around 200 crore so far but counting is still on, so the amount will be more. Over 25 premises were searched in Odisha and Jharkhand. In Odisha, some of the areas are in the Naxal territory, so those are sensitive zones. There are off the book sales (of liquor),” a source in the I-T department told ThePrint.
ThePrint reached the office of Congress MP Dhiraj Prasad Sahu via phone for comment but was told he was unavailable.
Jharkhand Congress spokesperson Rakesh Sinha told ThePrint Friday: “It has been portrayed like the entire money has been recovered from Dhiraj Sahu. That isn’t the case. The country liquor business is being run by Dhiraj Sahu’s entire family and this has been the family business for decades and the family owns several companies. By portraying that the entire money has been recovered from Dhiraj Sahu, they are targeting the Congress.”
While officials are still in the process of taking stock of the recovery at State Bank of India (SBI) branches in Sambalpur and Balangir, media reports suggest that the I-T department has also recovered some gold jewellery and biscuits.
Starting Wednesday, the I-T department conducted raids at premises linked to nearly half a dozen companies including S. Shiv Ganga and Company, Boudh Distillery Pvt Ltd (BDPL), and Ranisati Paddy Processing Private Ltd, in addition to the premises linked to two prominent liquor entrepreneurs — Deepak Sahu and Sanjay Sahu — in Odisha’s Titilagarh.
Simultaneous raids were conducted at Sambalpur, Balangir, Titilagarh, Boudh, Sundargarh, Rourkela and Bhubaneswar.
Though the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has demanded an Enforcement Directorate (ED) probe into the matter, the I-T department is yet to issue a statement on the link between the raids, recovered cash, the liquor businesses and the Congress Member of Parliament.
“The countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest ‘speeches’ of their leaders. Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi’s guarantee,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote in a post on X while sharing a picture of the front page of a leading Hindi daily which carried a picture of bundles of cash recovered by the Income Tax department during the raids.
This is an updated version of the report
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)
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