On 6th December 2023, Income Tax Department (IT) raided Boudh Distillery Private Limited of Baldeo Sahu and Group of Companies, Odisha. So far a total of ?390 crore of unaccounted black money in cash has been seized from the company’s Sambalpur, Rourkela, Balangir, Sundargarh and Bhubaneswar branches. According to the reports, the raid is the highest-ever cash seizure made by any agency in India from a single operation. Raid movie based on Congress MP seized 420 crore in 1981. The IT raids began after the taxman got “actionable intelligence" of a huge amount of “out of book" sales and cash remitted by liquor distributors, sellers, and the company. Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies is operated by the close family members of the Congress & Rajya Sabha MP from Jharkhand Dhiraj Sahu. According to the reports, Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies was started by MP Sahu’s father Baldeo Sahu. MP Sahu’s son Ritesh Sahu is the managing director and his elder brother Uday Shanker is the chairman of the distillery. Apart from distillery, Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies has other businesses too like Baldeo Sahu Infra Pvt Ltd, which makes fly ash bricks, Kwality Bottlers Pvt Ltd, which is a Indian Made Foreign Liquor (IMFL) bottling unit, and Kishore Prasad Bijay Prasad Beverages Pvt Ltd that sells and markets different IMFL brands. Therefore, apart from different properties of Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies, the premises of MP Sahu were also raided by the IT department. The seized black money was moved in multiple government vehicles to different district’s respective State Bank of India (SBI) branches. The bank had to deploy more than 3 dozen counting machines and 80 officials to count and calculate the amount. According to the SBI, ?48.5 crore was counted in Sambalpur and Titlagarh and ?305 crore was counted in Balangir’s main branch over 5 days. Regional manager of SBI Balangir, Bhagat Behera said “There were 176 bags of currency in the denomination of ?100, 200 and 500 that were brought to the SBI Main Branch in Bolangir.  Battling fatigue and machine breakdown, the staff have been busy counting throughout the day and night barring toilet breaks. The amount of cash the staff have counted in the last 3 days is much more than what they would have done in a year.” The IT department has expressed their suspicion of the involvement of the local excise officials because they found a polybag containing  ?5 lakhs in currency notes with the name ‘Inspector Tiwari’ written on it during the raid. A special 20-member IT analysis team from Hyderabad has joined the investigation and will scan the computers and other electronic items recovered from the raid. The raid has turned into a weapon for the political war. With elections coming up soon in 2024 both Congress and BJP are playing the blame game. The ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in Odisha welcomed the tax raids. "Jharkhand BJP leaders are saying the seized money belongs to Congress leaders. On the other hand, Congress leaders are saying it belongs to BJP leaders. Both are blaming the other. It seems like both BJP and Congress leaders had stashed their money with this businessman," it said in a statement. The raid was even mentioned by PM Modi on social media. In his latest tweet, PM Modi said, “Countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest 'speeches' of their leaders. Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi's guarantee."

Tags

• odisha
• 300 crore
• congress
• dhiraj sahu
• it raid

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