Simultaneous I-T raids in city and Namakkal dig up Rs 14.54 crore

With less than a week left for the Lok Sabha elections in Tamil Nadu, I-T searches aim to dig out unaccounted cash which is meant for elections.

Officials seized Rs 14.54 crore unaccounted cash, including Rs 13.80 crore from PSK Engineering Construction & Co. Apart from the cash, several incriminating documents and accounts with details of the generation of the money by inflation of expenditure, payments made to influential persons and unaccounted capital introduced were also seized, I-T officials disclosed.

An I-T official said that the raid was conducted based on information that unaccounted cash was in possession of the firm PSK Engineering Construction Company. The search was commenced after preliminary inquiries. Three premises in Chennai and four in Namakkal were covered in the search.

In another case, a group of cash handlers and financiers were raided after officials received inputs that they are mobilising cash from unaccounted sources for possible use in the elections. Locations linked to two individuals identified as Akash Baskaran and Sujai Reddy were also searched by the I-T teams. Rs 18 lakh was seized from Sujai Reddy and evidence for him investing Rs 16 crore in a Malaysian company, which was not disclosed in his IT returns, was also found.

Meanwhile, officials raided Zero Gravity Photography in Coimbatore around 11 am following a tip-off. There was no official report of cash seizure.