Two GST Officers arrested while accepting Rs.1.25 lakh Bribe

The Gujarat Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) arrested a Central GST officer receiving a bribe of Rs.1.25 lakh on Thursday.

The detained official, Mohammad Sheikh, a superintendent at the CGST Audit Department in Ahmedabad, was apprehended alongside Inspector Kuldeep Kushwaha and a middleman, Bhumik Soni.

The ACB took action after receiving a complaint via their toll-free number 1064. The officials demanded bribes for an alleged error discovered in the 2019-20 financial year accounting. The officials claimed a penalty was owed and demanded a bribe to settle the case.

The ACB acted on the complaint and caught the officials as they were accepting the bribe money. The operation shows the Gujarat ACB’s continued efforts to combat corruption, as other officials were recently caught in similar cases.

The Gujarat ACB has stepped up its crackdown on such activities in order to combat corruption in the state’s government departments.

Meanwhile, a journalist named Mahesh Langa was arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch in connection with an alleged GST fraud case. The FIR was filed under many sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC), including 420 (cheating), 467 (forgery), 468 (forgery for cheating), 471 (using forged papers), 474 (possession of false documents), and 120-B (criminal conspiracy).

The case was started based on data mining inputs provided by Himanshu Joshi, a senior intelligence officer at the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) in Ahmedabad. According to the authorities, the network of entities, which included DA Enterprises, engaged in a large-scale conspiracy to avoid GST duties.

The FIR cited 13 individuals and businesses, including DA Enterprises, which is purportedly owned by Langa’s brother, Manojkumar Rambhai Langa. Officials revealed that a network of nearly 200 fake enterprises is operating across the country in a systematic manner, cheating the government by obtaining and passing on phony input tax credits, resulting in considerable losses to the exchequer.