Patna: Income tax (I-T) department sleuths on Wednesday raided 14 locations of a renowned sweetmeat shop chain and seven premises of a prominent real estate company in Patna under Operation Sangam. As many as 11 outlets of the sweet shop at different locations in the city, a restaurant in Gandhi Maidan area, hotel at Chitragupt Nagar and an event management business at Patliputra Colony, run and managed by Amit Mankani, Sandeep Mankani and their family, were raided simultaneously. “With an annual turnover of around Rs 100 crores, the business is found to be involved in tax evasion by falsely claiming tax deducted at source (TDS) and fake self-assessment details in the ITR, resulting in Rs 9 crore unpaid taxes. The company has also taken unsecured loans from parties, recorded bogus creditors and engaged in related party transactions to reduce net profits, attracting criminal prosecution for these offences under the Income Tax Act,” an I-T official said. During investigation, it was revealed that they did not pay regular taxes, including agreed self-assessment taxes, amounting to more than Rs 10 crore for the last three years. According to the officials, these people filed their income returns for these three years by giving fake challan numbers of self-assessment tax paid in their returns. The official said they falsely claimed TDS deductions and also made huge salary payments without deducting TDS at the prescribed rate. “While filing their income returns for these financial years, and when the demand was raised, they gave wrong challan details of self-assessment tax but deliberately avoided tax payment. This was noticed in Nov 2024, and they were warned by the IT department. However, they took these warnings very lightly and paid tax of Rs 65 lakh against the outstanding of over Rs 10 crore.” Meanwhile, the IT officials said the real estate company successfully completed two major projects in Patna, while currently, two are operational. “Both have more than two hundred flats each. The investigation has revealed that the company’s director and promoters evaded taxes and recorded significant fake purchases in its accounts. It has been confirmed that the company is accepting cash for the sale of flats and booking unaccounted expenses in cash,” the official said. During the raid, an attempt was made to delete a lot of data by the accused. Along with this, the team of cyber forensic experts working with the I-T was engaged in collecting backup of 11 servers, cellphones, emails and accounts stored in computers, and investigating them. The investigation wing of the Patna I-T department has also mapped such types of tax evaders in every trade, and is planning to launch massive operations against the evaders before March 2025.
