Hyderabad: A law grad and a woman affiliate employee of the Income Tax Department allegedly teamed up to steal tax refunds right under the nose of the I-T top brass. Central Crime Station (CCS) sleuths sniffed out the scam before it built up to astronomic proportions and arrested the Bunty and Babli duo, and four associates of theirs, on Wednesday. Damage done by then: Rs 1.15 crore.
Tax consultant Shaik Mohammad Jahangir, 32, and B Anju Rani, 27, employee of a firm to which the IT Department outsourced some work, thought up a simple modus operandi to carry out their scam: they managed to obtain fake PAN cards, filed fictitious IT returns, opened bank accounts on fictitious names and tapped the refunds flowing through their pipeline. In executing this cosy scam, they enlisted the help of four others: Mohammad Raziuddin Siddiqi alias Mukkaram, 32, Mir Mustafa Ali Hussaini, 43, Mir Mujtaba Ali Hussaini, 31, and Mohammad Abdul Wahed, 47.
The scam ran smoothly from December 2010 to March 2012 and it wasn’t until May this year that IT officials smelt a rat and tipped off CCS. According to deputy commissioner of police (CCS) P J Victor, Jahangir got Rani to worm her way into the AST software used by the IT Department to enter fictitious returns into the taxation system and also rig the rectification process carried out by IT personnel under Section 154 of the IT Act.
While processing the fraudulent data, Rani entered an address at Priya Colony in Mehadipatnam where the refunds were to be delivered. In the meantime, Jahangir and his associates managed to obtain fake PAN cards and opened bank accounts on fictitious names. Once the rigged rectification data are entered into the system, an IT pay order is automatically generated at a Mumbai branch of SBI which exclusively clears refund claims. The cleared fake refunds were duly delivered at the address given.
DCP Victor said Jahangir and Rani opened 24 bank accounts in SBI, SBH, Axis Bank and Indian Overseas Bank branches and carried out 150 fraudulent transactions.
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