BHOPAL: A joint operation by the Central GST (Goods and Services Tax) Commissionerate in Indore and the Madhya Pradesh Police's cyber cell has led to the busting of an alleged GST credit fraud running into hundreds of crores.
The fraud was committed by a fake GST Credit racket involved in generating and passing over Rs 100 crores of Input Tax Credit (ITC).
Five men aged between 25 years and 35 years have been nabbed by the CGST Indore Commissionerate and the Indore unit of state police cyber cell from Surat. All of them are school dropouts and were committing the fraud through 500-plus bogus companies, the state police's cyber cell Indore unit',s inspector Rashid Khan told The New Indian Express.
While the two persons, including the key operator and his close accomplice, arrested from Surat on May 25 are being grilled in remand by the CGST Indore Commissionerate sleuths, the three others were also arrested from the same commercial city of Gujarat are being quizzed by the cyber cell's cops in Indore.
The three men arrested by the state police's cyber cell, Indore, have been identified as Suleman Karim Ali Meghani (29), Shamsuddin Bodhani (33) and Firoz Khan (36).
The joint operation which began in February following concrete inputs to the CGST Indore Commissionerate and subsequent complaint to the cyber cell Indore unit, has led to the unearthing of details pertaining to more than 500 fake firms along with incriminating documents, materials, data, many mobile phones and SIM cards. More than 300 bogus firm seals and letter pads etc. have been seized during the search operation. The racket used forged documents, addresses and faked identities to register firms to generate and pass fake GST credit using multiple layers of transactions of more than Rs 700 Crores.
They were routing the transactions through multiple digital wallet accounts linked to different mobile numbers avoiding conventional banking channel.
They also seem to be involved in identity theft besides defrauding government revenue.