CHENNAI/TIRUCHY/VELLORE: Launching a major crackdown on sandminers in Tamil Nadu, several teams of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) on Tuesday conducted raids across the State, following allegations of money laundering and tax evasion.

Simultaneous raids were on in over 40 locations in several districts including Chennai, Vellore, Dindigul, Tiruchi, Karur and Pudukkottai, among others, and targetted sales depots, offices and residences of sand mining contractors.

The allegations were that while sand was officially sold online with an e-receipt provided at the mining depots, there were significant offline sales that weren’t consistently recorded.

The searches, during which several incriminating documents were seized, were to ascertain whether tax was credited to government accounts from the e-bills issued to thousands of lorry owners/operators, ED sources said.

The raids were held with the deployment of Armed Central para-military force personnel in all the locations.

In Tiruchy and Pudukottai, the premises of known government quarry contractor S Ramachandran and his associates were searched. According to sources Ramachandran, from Muthupattinam in Pudukkottai, has been involved in a series of government contracts including stone and sand quarries in many districts. Similar searches were held at a blue metal quarry owned by Shanmugam, one of the associates of Ramachandran at Punalkulam near Gandharvakottai; and several others linked to Ramachandran.

In Chennai, searches were carried out in five places including the house of Pothipani Thilagam, an engineer attached to WRD; the office of the superintendent engineer of WRD in Ezhilagam; the house of another engineer Muthaiah in Alandur; premises of a chartered accountant in Anna Nagar, and house of Ramachandran in Teynampet.