I-T raids on liquor units completed after 6 days; over Rs 350 cr recovered

Bhubaneswar: The Income Tax department winded up its six-day search operation on Tuesday and left the country-liquor manufacturing unit in Odisha’s Bolangir district after recovering more than

Rs 350 crore in unaccounted cash and about 3 kilograms of gold, officials said.

As the raids were completed, the I-T team took two managers of the distillery located at Sutapada to an unknown location for interrogation, they said.

The company was owned by the family of Congress MP Dhiraj Prasad Sahu, a resident of Jharkhand.

The Odisha unit of the Congress, however, claimed that the party has no connection with the seizure of the huge unaccounted money, termed as the “highest-ever” haul in a single action by any probe agency in the country.

Following a tip-off regarding tax evasion, the I-T department officials launched a search operation at six locations in Odisha on December 6. More than 200 people including bank employees were engaged in the search and counting of the cash in Bolangir and Sambalpur.

The raids were conducted in Bolangir, Titlagarh, Boudh, Rourkela, Sundergarh and Bhubaneswar. I-T department DG Sanjay Bahadur camped in Bhubaneswar to monitor the raids.

Meanwhile, political parties intensified their protest and blamed each other over the I-T raids.With pti inputs