CA arrested for accepting bribe of Rs. 26 Lakhs on behalf of Income Tax Department

Ankush Sareen, a Chartered Accountant (CA) and resident of Ludhiana was detained by the Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) for accepting a bribe of Rs. 26 lakhs from a guy on behalf of income tax inspectors headquartered in Chandigarh.

According to a VB spokeswoman, a case against Sareen, a private practitioner, has been filed after an investigation on an online complaint made to the chief minister’s anti-corruption action line.

In lieu of paying a bribe to the income tax officers in response to a notice sent to his relatives living in the USA regarding an income tax return, Sareen allegedly accepted Rs 26 lakh in two installments, according to the complainant Parminder Singh Sidhu of Malsian village in the Ludhiana district, he said.

The complainant said that on January 15, he gave Rs 25 lakh in cash to the CA at his home and recorded the incident on camera. Following this, on January 26, CA Ankush Sareen received Rs 1 lakh extra from the complainant for “junior officers of the income tax department.”

The complainant learned that the I-T department’s notification had not been responded to during an investigation, and he also discovered that the CA had fraudulently accepted a bribe while posing as income tax authorities by threatening him with severe penalties. He didn’t give the CA the money back when he requested it.

According to the spokesperson, the VB section of the Ludhiana range looked into the complaints’ claims and, after finding the CA guilty of accepting bribes, filed a corruption case against him at the VB police station in Ludhiana. He claimed that further research into this matter was ongoing.