CBI arrests J'khand's Principal Commissioner of I-T from his Kolkata residence

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested Jharkhand's Principal Commissioner of Income Tax (I-T) Tapas Kumar Dutta from his residence in Kolkata on Thursday.

The investigating agency conducted search operations in his flats at Salt Lake and New Alipore and seized a total of cash around Rs 3.7 crore and 6.6 kg gold. The accused was remanded to the custody of the CBI for four days when produced before the Special Judge in Ranchi. Different teams of the CBI conducted raids at 23 locations including 18 in Kolkata and five at Ranchi in this connection on Wednesday. The search operation was initiated on Wednesday morning in the flats of Dutta and it continued till early morning on Thursday. Besides cash and gold, the investigating officers have also seized some "incriminating documents including papers related to a flat worth around Rs 4 crore". One locker of the Principal I-T Commissioner of Ranchi has also been seized.

Senior CBI officers are going through the documents that were seized from the flats of the accused. There are allegations against Dutta of entering into a criminal conspiracy after taking a huge bribe. The CBI initiated a case under various sections of the Indian Penal Code and Prevention of Corruption Act against Dutta and others who were involved in this case. Additional CIT Arvind Kumar, ITO (Tech) Ranjeet Kumar, another I-T officer called Ganguly, Kolkata-based businessmen, entry operators, Biswanath Agarwal, Santosh Chodhury, Aakash Agarwal and Vinod Agarwal and a Chartered Accountant were the others against whom the CBI initiated the case as they allegedly got I-T files of different companies transferred from Kolkata/ Hazaribagh to Ranchi. It was done "for providing undue favour" to these tax assesses who were charged with heavy tax liabilities in return for illegal gratification.