The CBI produced the arrested principal income tax commissioner (Patna and Dhanbad) and four others before its designated court in the Bihar capital on Wednesday.
They were arrested on Tuesday evening during an alleged exchange of ₹10 lakh bribe from different income tax assesses, and were being questioned by the agency sleuths in Patna.
The arrested persons produced before the court included principal income tax commissioner Santosh Kumar and four Dhanbad-based persons connected to him — the owner of GTS outsourcing company Gurpal Singh, radiologist Pranay Purvey and his cousin Rajiv Kumar, and a printing press owner Ashok Chaurasia.
The investigation agency has already registered a case against them after receiving complaints and intelligence inputs of Santosh abusing his official position for illegal gratification from various assesses under his jurisdiction in lieu of allowing them to evade income tax.
“Simultaneous searches conducted at 21 places in Patna, Dhanbad and Noida (Uttar Pradesh) came to an end today (Wednesday) after yielding a substantial amount of incriminating documents and evidence. Though we have produced the arrested persons before the special court in Patna, our investigations are still going on,” a CBI official said.
Santosh is a 1988 batch Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officer and will retire on September 30. He used to visit Dhanbad in Jharkhand every Saturday to dispose of official matters. The other arrested people allegedly acted as his touts.
“We started our searches on the Krishnashtami day (Monday). The concerned official premises, including those belonging to the income tax department, were opened despite it being a holiday. A day later the accused were arrested and brought to Patna. There are indications that several people in Bihar also acted as middlemen for the arrested principal income tax commissioner. We are probing the entire network,” a CBI official said.
Sources said that the CBI put a tail on a person carrying ₹10 lakh bribe money from Dhanbad. He was to hand over the amount to one of the middlemen allegedly working for Santosh. Both of them were nabbed and further action ensued.
