RANCHI: As the Income Tax (IT) raid entered its eighth day, the Income Tax officials are planning to dig a few portions of land of Rajya Sabha MP Dheeraj Sahu’s house located on Radium Road in Ranchi as they suspect huge treasure is hidden underground.
So far Rs 354 crore cash has been recovered from his Bolangir office of Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies in Odisha.
Meanwhile, the Income Tax sleuths have been using Ground penetrating Radar (GPR) to find the treasures hidden under the ground at Sahu’s Lohardaga residence in Jharkhand. GPR has already been used at his Ranchi residence on Tuesday.
Nearly a dozen IT officials reached Sahu's Lohardaga residence on Wednesday. They also brought three members of the Sahu family along with them. If IT sources are to be believed, after getting so much cash and gold in Odisha, they are quite hopeful that they will also find hidden treasures under the ground at his residences in Ranchi and Lohardaga.
Background
On December 6, IT sleuths launched raids against Boudh Distillery Private Limited, its promoters and others on charges of tax evasion and "off-the-book" transactions.
By the end of the fifth day of marathon raids, a huge pile of cash had been recovered which was considered as the "highest-ever" such haul in a single action conducted by any probe agency in the country and gone past Rs 300 crore.
Premises linked to Sahu were also covered as part of the searches, according to officials.
Interestingly, as many as 176 bags full of cash were recovered from the office of Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies in Odisha which were meant to be used post-polls in Chhattisgarh as they were expecting a hung Assembly in the state. It took four days to count the recovered notes involving as many as 50 bank staff
of three banks.
According to IT sources, Rs 354 crore were recovered alone from nine almirahs kept at the Bolangir office of Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies in Odisha while
rest of the amount was recovered from other locations in Odisha and Jharkhand.
Though there is no official confirmation in this regard, local sources claimed that the total recovery of notes amounts to Rs 465 crore.
IT sleuths are said to have recovered three bags containing jewelleries and several other important documents from Sahu’s Ranchi residence.