The income tax department raided the residential premises of government officials, including several IAS officers, and officials of ICICI Prudential, a private insurance company on Thursday here.
The raids, conducted simultaneously at 13 locations in Madhya Pradesh and seven in neighbouing Chhattisgarh, are learnt to have been based on documentary evidence unearthed in similar raids earlier, informed reliable sources from the IT department.
The premises raided in Madhya Pradesh belonged to IAS officers Arvind Joshi and his wife Tinu Joshi (both principal secretaries), agriculture secretary Babulal Ahirvar, former bureaucrat M.A. Khan, two executive engineers and Seema Jain, Branch Manager of ICICI Prudential and several other officials and agents of the insurance firm.
“The search is still on,” Brajesh Gupta, director general of investigations (IT) for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh told The Hindu .
“In M.P., the raids involve bureaucrats, engineers, businessmen, officials and agents of ICICI Prudential, while in Chhattisgarh, they involve a bureaucrat and his families and relatives,” said Mr. Gupta.
The documents reportedly suggest the involvement of the officials with regard to huge investments in the insurance firm. Documents revealing crore of benami property and several currency note counting machines had reportedly been unearthed as the raids continued at the time of filing this report.
This is the second such crackdown on bureaucrats by the IT department. The IT department, in other raids conducted last month, had also unearthed massive irregularities in the purchase of medicines in government hospitals by secretary level IAS officers and former bureaucrats of the health department.
