Day after Rs 13.5 crore seizure, I-T, police launch massive drive

New Delhi: A day after currency notes worth about Rs 13.5 crore were seized from the office of a law firm in south Delhi’s Greater Kailash office, a joint team of the Delhi police and income tax department on Sunday launched a massive hunt to track perpetrators for amassing the huge currency notes. The seized currency notes included newly printed currency worth about Rs 2.62 crore.

“The recovered amount is close to Rs 13.50 crore. The amount of Rs 2.62 crore was found in newly introduced Rs 2000 notes. Besides, Rs 7.7crore was in the form of  Rs 1,000 notes, Rs 3.06 crore was in the form of Rs 100 denomination and Rs 11 lakh was in Rs 50 denomination. Two note counting machines were also found the house,” said Ravindra Yadav, joint commissioner of police (crime).

According to I-T department sources, the lawyer had recently declared unaccounted income worth over Rs 125 crore after searches were carried out against him.

The officer said that the police had been keeping a watch on the advocate who owned the law  firm for a long time. “We got a tip-off that a renowned advocate, who had declared  Rs 125 crore before the IT department officials few days back, is hoarding huge amount of cash illegally and indulging in transaction of the old and new currency notes.”

On Saturday evening, a secret input was received by the Inter State Cell (ISC) of the crime branch that huge amount of currency notes had arrived at the office in Greater Kailash. After due procedure and sanction, a search warrant was procured and the premises were raided late Saturday evening. From the premises, huge new and old currency notes was recovered to the tune of several crores.

When the police team raided the office, the rooms were locked and a caretaker was present.  “It’s probably one of the several office premises, which was mainly used as cash godown guarded by just one guard,” said the officer. The police said that more cash is likely to be recovered in the follow-up raids to this raid.

The I-T department has been informed and will be probing the case ahead.

According to the sources, one Rohit Tandon, the promoter of T&T law firm, is being question by the I-T department and Delhi police. About two months ago, when the tax department raided Mr Tandon’s house,  documents related to Rs 19 crore unaccounted money were found, which, the accused said, had been kept as fixed deposit in a bank.

Meanwhile, the police did not find any unaccounted cash after it conducted the raids at his 6-7 other locations in national capital on Saturday, said sources.