The case of alleged GST fraud of nearly Rs 1,400 crore booked against former chief secretary Somesh Kumar and four others, including an IIT-H assistant professor and commercial tax department officials, will be transferred to the Crime Investigation Department (CID). Official orders in this regard would be issued soon, confirmed sources.
The accused commercial tax officials allegedly hid information regarding Rs 10,000 crore belonging to various companies, according to unconfirmed reports. Officials are clueless about the motive behind this. Officials suspect that the state exchequer might have suffered a loss to the tune of Rs 10,000 crore and said investigation would throw more light on this.
Sources in the department added that the transfer to the CID is being initiated as the case involves alleged tax evasion from various states. It is learnt that as many as 75 taxpayers, including major companies such as the Telangana State Beverages Corporation Limited, are reportedly involved in this alleged scam.
The transfer comes less than a week after former chief secretary Somesh Kumar, who also served as an advisor to former CM K Chandrasekhar Rao, was named accused number 5 after a complaint was filed by the commercial taxes department.
On July 26, joint commissioner (CT), Central Computer Wing, K Ravi Kanuri filed a complaint at the Hyderabad Central Crime Station alleging that Somesh Kumar, two higher officials of the commercial tax department — SV Kasi Visweswara Rao and A Siva Rama Prasad — along with IIT-H assistant professor Sobhan Babu and private company Plianto Technologies were involved in the input tax credit scam.
‘WhatsApp group created under Somesh Kumar’s supervision’
Based on inquiries conducted by the commercial taxes department, the complainant alleged that a WhatsApp group named “Special Initiatives”, which was operated under the supervision of Somesh Kumar, played a vital role in the fraud.
“On perusal of the WhatsApp chat history, it was noticed that certain reports were generated estimating IGST loss and instructions were issued not to cancel registrations even in fraud cases,” the FIR read.
The scam came to light after the commercial taxes department first noticed a Rs 25.51 crore GST fraud by Big Leap Technologies and Solutions Private Limited. The entity allegedly passed on input tax credit worth Rs 25.51 crore “without actually paying any tax to the government”, the complainant said.
When the officials reached out to IIT Hyderabad, which was engaged as service provider for development of software by the department, they reportedly learnt that the authority concerned did not submit proper discrepancy reports.
Further, an officer visited the premises of IIT-H and reported that the operations pertaining to the commercial taxes department were purportedly run in the name of Plianto Technologies Private Limited. Here too, there were discrepancies as the company “denied developing any software for the commercial taxes department”. However, the officials initiated a forensic report that allegedly indicated “the transfer of proprietary data of the commercial taxes department to a third party without authorisation”.
When assistant professor Sobhan Babu was questioned, he is said to have claimed that there were “changes in applications being done on oral instructions from the then Spl. Chief Secretary, Revenue (CT), Additional Commissioner (ST), (IT &EIU), SV Kasi Visweswara Rao, and Deputy Commissioner (ST), STU-1, Hyderabad Rural, Siva Rama Prasad. etc.”
During the investigation, the commercial taxes department officials were reportedly told that Sobhan Babu was part of the WhatsApp group wherein the accused top officials gave him specific directions relating to the changes to the software.
Based on the forensic audit that the department initiated, several reports were generated alleging that the accused were involved in masking data pertaining to taxpayers to favour them and cause a loss to the state exchequer.
Upon receiving the complaint and relevant technical evidence, the police registered a case under Sections 406, 409 and 120 B of the IPC and Section 65 of the IT Act on charges of criminal breach of trust, criminal conspiracy and tampering with computer source documents.