3 arrested for evading ₹58 cr tax

JAIPUR: The Directorate General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) on Monday arrested three for generating fraudulent bills and invoices to claim input tax credit without depositing the actual good and services tax (GST) amount with the government.

“A total GST evasion of ₹58 crore under section 132(1) of CGST Act, 2017, has been detected so far. Three people have been arrested and sent to judicial custody until June 2,” DGGI additional director general Rajendra Kumar said on Monday.

Kumar said incriminating documents, unaccounted cash and laptops were seized after simultaneous search operations were conducted at 21 business and residential establishments in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

“The search was conducted based on suspicious transactions carried out by M/s Honey Enterprises registered with GST Jodhpur commissionerate that had not deposited GST worth ₹9.07 crore between July 1 and December 2017, but had claimed input credit,” he said. “The search revealed that Ghaziabad-based Sandeep Kumar Agrawal was the mastermind of the racket, who used to generate bills without actual sale of goods,” Kumar said

“Shriram Kumar of Honey Enterprises admitted that his firm did not supply any goods but used to issue bills to get the input credit cleared,” Kumar said.

The third accused is chartered accountant Pankaj Khandelwal who was tax consultant for Honey Enterprises. “Khandelwal used to generate GST registration number in names of dead people. A total GST evasion of ₹22.54 crore was detected by six fake firms registered by Khandelwal,” Kumar said.