BENGALURU: Continuing investigation into the kidnap and extortion case against four Central GST officials, Central Crime Branch (CCB) officials arrested two more businessmen, Prakash Jain and Mukesh Jain, for conniving with the accused to extort money from the 35-year-old complainant, Keshav Tak of GM Palya.
After GST officials kidnapped Tak, he had reportedly arranged Rs 1.5 crore through hawala to give to them. Now Tak has landed in trouble as CCB officials have written to the Income Tax department to probe the illegal hawala transaction.
Prakash Jain and Mukesh Jain are natives of Rajasthan and are into gold-related business. They were reportedly giving vital information to the accused as informants. Based on this information, the four officers had reportedly kidnapped Tak, and three other businessmen. Prakash and Mukesh had kept Rs 50 lakh as commission from the Rs 1.5 crore ransom paid. The accused are alleged to have used some of the money to purchase gold biscuits. Police managed to recover cash and the gold biscuits from the six accused.
In a joint operation by CCB and East Division police, four Central GST officials, including a woman officer, were arrested. A case of kidnapping for ransom, wrongful restraint, wrongful confinement and extortion was registered against the accused officers. The four officers are Abhishek, Superintendent of Central Tax, South Commissionerate, Bengaluru Zone, Manoj Saini and Nagesh Babu, Senior Intelligence Officers, GST Intelligence, Bengaluru Zone, and Sonali Sahay, Intelligence Officer, Bengaluru Zone.
The incident happened between August 30 and September 1. The accused officials raided the complainant’s residence illegally on August 30 by trespassing his property. In the complaint, Tak had stated that the officials had demanded Rs 3 crore, and he had given them Rs 1.5 crore.