CGST Crackdown: Shoes Sent Across India on Fake Bills, Investigation Underway

Traders in Agra were sending shoes to other districts of Uttar Pradesh and states using fake bills so they could avoid paying taxes. They were getting help from some middlemen to do this.

The Central GST team in Agra found out about it on Sunday. They raided a warehouse near the Collectorate and seized over 16,000 pairs of shoes. Now, the authorities are trying to track down the traders involved.

The Anti-Evasion team of CGST in Agra got information that shoes were being sent all over the country through the railway parcel service using fake bills. Acting on this information, they raided a warehouse in Radha Vallabh’s garden near the Collectorate on Saturday night. The operation lasted until Sunday night, and they seized about 16,000 pairs of shoes that didn’t have proper bills. The total value of these shoes is around Rs 1.25 crore.

During the raid, CGST officials also seized computers, laptops, and Amit Singh’s mobile phone from the warehouse. They will check all the data on these devices to find out where he got the shoes from and which traders he was sending them to. Studying these devices should help uncover the full details of the shoe black-market network.

When the warehouse owner Amit Singh was questioned, he admitted that he had been sending shoes to cities like Lucknow, Kanpur, Meerut, Delhi, and states like West Bengal, Bihar, Maharashtra, and Karnataka using fake bills to avoid paying GST.

The CGST is now trying to find out who really owns the seized shoes. The investigation is still ongoing.