Congress Rajya Sabha member Dhiraj Sahu, from whose premises a Rs 350 crore cash was seized by the Income Tax department in December last year, has revised his income tax returns and paid taxes for Rs 150 crore, news agency ANI reported citing sources.
The Congress leader has argued that some of the cash recovered relates to business conducted during the current financial year, for which returns are to be filed only in the next financial year. Rs 50 crore out of the total cash recovered remains unexplained, leading to anticipated penalties and taxes.
“They have been unable to explain anything about the Rs 50 cr from the overall cash pile and will have to pay tax and penalty. We will see the returns for when they are filed in July,” one of the sources said as quoted by ANI.
The income tax regulations permit revisions of returns to fix errors or omit any information. The Congress MP has been in the limelight since December of last year after the Income Tax authority conducted raids on locations connected to his family’s Odisha-based Boudh Distillery Pvt Ltd and seized Rs 351.8 crore in cash.
The Odisha Congress MP Dhiraj Sahu denied any wrongdoing while saying that the money recovered from his premises belongs to him and ‘it is the proceedings from the sale of liquor.’ “I can admit that the money that has been recovered belongs to my firm. The cash that has been recovered is related to my liquor firms, it is the proceedings from the sale of liquor,” Sahu said.
The IT raids against Sahu began after the income tax department found stacks of notes in the almirah at the premises of the Congress MP. The cash recovered has been the highest-ever seizure of currency by an agency in a single operation.
A few high-profile seizures from the past include one in 2019, when the GST Intelligence raided a businessman in Kanpur and found cash worth Rs 257 crore, and another in July 2018, when the I-T department found cash worth Rs 163 crore while conducting searches against a road construction company in Tamil Nadu.
