3 GST officials booked by CBI for demanding Rs 22 lakh bribe

Two central GST superintendents and one other officer have been charged by the CBI for allegedly pressuring a bullion merchant to pay them Rs 22 lakh in order to resolve a disagreement.

The accused persons, Satish Sharma and Ankur Godyan, who are both central GST superintendents along with another official, have been identified.

The accused, who was stationed at the Air India headquarters at Nariman Point, did not accept any bribe, despite the fact that the bribe demand was verified, according to CBI sources.

The CBI opened an investigation after receiving a handwritten complaint that claimed the superintendents had demanded a bribe of Rs 22 lakh. The complainant, a bullion trader from south Mumbai’s Zaveri Bazar neighborhood, stated that he had gotten a summons from the GST, which set off a sequence of events in which the officials requested a bribe to resolve the issue.

The complainant stated that he visited the anti-evasion office in South Mumbai before submitting all the necessary paperwork. Godyan then sent the complainant’s son another summons. After visiting the GST office and providing Ankur Godyan and Akhilesh with the data, the complainant was asked to pay a bribe of Rs 22 lakh to resolve the issue.

The complaint was detained at the GST office after the accused authorities searched the trader’s office on March 15 without producing any paperwork. The dealer was allegedly blackmailed by the officials with a Rs 3 crore tax burden if the bribe was not paid. After threatening to withhold the bribe payment from the complaint for 24 hours, the accused officials granted him permission to leave.

When the complainant brought the incident to the attention of the CBI after it had happened, the agency quietly investigated the claims made by the complainant and filed a corruption report against the two superintendents and one other GST official involved in the incident.

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