Income Tax Department conducts searches in Gujarat

The Income Tax Department conducted a search and seizure operation on a prominent group engaged in chemical manufacture and real estate development on November 18, 2021. The search spanned over 20 locations in Gujarat, including Vapi and Sarigam, as well as Silvassa and Mumbai.

A considerable quantity of incriminating evidences in the shape of documents, diary entries, and digital data demonstrating the group’s earning of enormous amounts of unaccounted revenue and its investment in assets have been discovered and seized. The evidence clearly shows taxable income avoidance using various methods such as suppressing output, using phoney purchase invoices without actual delivery of the items to inflate purchases, claiming bogus GST credit, claiming bogus commission charges, and so on. In addition, the assessee group has received on-money in real estate deals. All of this has resulted in the creation of unaccounted cash.

Several incriminating evidences of cash transactions in investing in immovable properties and cash loans were also seized during the search proceedings.

The search operation resulted in the seizure of around Rs. 2.5 crore in unaccounted cash and Rs. 1 crore in jewellery. Restriction has been imposed on 16 bank lockers.

According to early analysis of the documents/evidence discovered during the search, the estimated unexplained revenue is more than Rs.100 crore.