The tax raids by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence on Kanpur perfume businessman Piyush Jain is a throwback to one of India’s longest tax raids, that went on for almost three nights and two days.
The 2018 Hindi movie Raid starring Ajay Devgn was inspire by these raids.
India’s Longest ever Income Tax Raids, from 1981.
Income Tax officers land up at the door of one of India’s most influential politicians back then, Sardar Inder Singh.
Sardar Inder Singh was 91 years old.
Sardar Inder Singh was an MLA from Punjab (1946-1951), and then a Rajya Sabha MP.
Thrilling Story of the Tax Raids at Sardar Inder Singh’s Home
On the morning of July 16, 1981, Sardar Inder Singh, 91, a prominent businessman and a former Rajya Sabha MP woke up to see more than 90 officers outside his gate.
The officers were there to conduct a tax raid at his house.
Insiders said that when the raid starts at 8 am, even the IT officers were not aware of the hidden treasure they were going to discover.
What was suppose to be a one-day operation, it stretched to three nights and two days, sending shockwaves across the country.
The IT raid was orchestrate by Alak Kumar Batbyal, Deputy Director (Intelligence), who had gather not only 90 officers for the job but also 200 policemen and some upper division clerks for smooth operations.
The raid was simultaneous at all the locations of Sardar Inder Singh’s family members.
Other members of officer Batbyal’s team were conducting raids on Sardar Inder Singh’s family in Lajpat Nagar, Tilak Nagar, Arya Nagar; some of the most prominent colonies in Kanpur.
Also at the same time, the factories of Singh Engineering Works Pvt Limited, located in Fazal Ganj and Panki, were seal and 15 lockers under different names in Kanpur, Delhi and Mussoorie were open.
It was a completely plan raid.
Once the raid starts, it was Treasure Island.
All the houses and bank lockers threw up riches.
By the end of the first day of the raid, the total collection in cash from Kanpur alone was a staggering Rs 92 lakh.
Point to be noted, we’re talking of 40 years ago.
The IT team also found 250 tolas of gold worth Rs 11 lakh, two gold bars worth Rs 9.12 lakh, jewellery worth Rs 7.54 lakh, 144 guineas of Rs 1.85 lakh and fix deposits worth Rs 7.04 lakh.
When the lockers in a Delhi bank were open, the department discovered Rs 72,000 in cash and fix deposit receipts worth Rs 1.1 lakh.
In all, the collection was of Rs 1.3 crore.
Many more was to come in the next two days.
In Kanpur, six more gold bars of 250 tolas worth Rs 30 lakh were recover from two lockers.
Officials have also said that bonds worth Rs 58 lakh were not seize and Rs 1.5 lakh soiled currency notes were not adds to the total collection of the department from the raid.
The IT department led by Deputy Director Alak Kumar Batbyal had to rope in the local Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to fully count the cash that was recover.
Chief Manager of RBI, Syed Raza Zaidi, told back then :
“A special room was set aside and 45 people including some officers were deputed to count the cash and even then it took 18 hours.” The RBI had to lend their cash vans along with armed gunmen to transport the haul.
After the counting was over, after 18 hours, the Income Tax Department of Kanpur had discover that it had collect a sum of Rs 1.6 crore in cash.
Sharda Prasad Pandey, then Commissioner of Income Tax department Said :
”There has never been another recovery like it.”
Lockers of Punjab National Bank (Swaroop Nagar), Allahabad Bank (Swaroop Nagar), Hindustan Commercial Bank (Arya Nagar) which belong to family members of Inder Singh were seale and the owners of the lockers were ask to go to the bank on different days for the search.
As per Prem Prakash Srivastava, an income tax officer, properties of another 15 members of the house were raid, which went on for 1 month.
Notices were serve to Sardar Inder Singh, his wife Mohinder Kaur, his four sons, two sons-in-law and a dozen members of the family.
Sardar Inder Singh was a former Congress MP and industrialist in Kanpur who own the first steel re-rolling mill in Uttar Pradesh.
Till 1981, Singh own the biggest steel mill in the state.
Sardar Inder Singh was also elect Mayor of Kanpur twice.
As in the movie Raid (2018), it was shown that an inside member of the family led the officer Amul Patnaik towards locating the hidden wealth.
But, in reality too something of this nature occur.
Though nothing official was said on this, a leading industrialist in Kanpur who did not wish to be name had said that a family feud led to a tip-off to the Income Tax department.
It was also said that Sardar Inder Singh’s wife was the sister-in-law of Suresh Ram, son of former Union Minister Jagjivan Ram.
It is said that this is one of the reasons behind the family problems of Sardar Inder Singh.
Income tax officers have always kept quiet on this.
For them, what matter at the end of the day was the biggest tax haul in Independent India’s history.
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