CBI names 14 including Ranchi Principal Commissioner of I-T in charge-sheet

Kolkata: The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a charge-sheet in the Court of Special Judge in Ranchi naming fourteen accused including the then Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (I-T) in Ranchi and four other I-T officers.

It may be recalled that the CBI arrested Ranchi's Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (I-T) Tapas Kumar Dutta from his residence in Kolkata on July 13 on charges of taking "huge bribe" and "criminal misconduct".

His arrest came a day after the investigating agency had recovered Rs 3.5 crore cash and 5 kg gold during search operations in his Salt Lake residence. Simultaneous raids were conducted at 23 locations including 18 in Kolkata and five at Ranchi.

On Thursday, CBI had arrested four I-T officers Vinod Kumar Pal, who was posted at Hazaribagh, Tarun Roy, of Koderma and Ranjit Kumar Lal and Sunil Kumar Gupta both posted at Ranchi. They were arrested on similar charges of taking bribe under several sections of the Prevention of Corruption Act. One Santosh Shah was also arrested on Thursday.

Their names have also appeared in the charge-sheet that has been filed in the court on Friday.

Besides the five I-T officers including the Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (I-T) in Ranchi, rest of the 14 people whose names appeared in the charge-sheet were leveled with charges of giving bribe.

It may be recalled that the investigation of CBI had revealed that Dutta was posted at Ranchi in 2016-17 when he had entered into a criminal conspiracy with ITO (Tech) Ranjeet Kumar Lal and some other persons to allegedly get I-T files of different companies transferred from Kolkata or Hazaribagh to Ranchi "for providing undue favour".

It was found that Dutta had issued "favourable orders" for the private companies owned by Biswanath Agarwal, Santosh Shah and Aakash Agarwal.