Economic Offences Wing search in Rs17 crore tax evasion

Nagpur: Sleuths of Economic Offences Wing (EOW) under DCP Deepali Masirkar conducted search at the premises of Vidarbha Bottlers' Private Limited at Chinchbhuvan locality on Tuesday in a case related to alleged tax evasion of Rs17 crores over three financial years. An offence was registered at Sonegaon police station in February before the case was shifted to the EOW of crime branch.
Police said six persons were booked in the case, identified as Suresh Jaiswal and his sons Amresh and Sanjeet Jaiswal, and Devidas Jaiswal, along with his sons, Vishal and Vaibhav, for their role in evading Value Added Tax (VAT) for the financial years 2012-13, 2013-14 and 2014-15. Sources from EOW said the Jaiswals had claimed there was no VAT generated for the three financial years. Suresh and his sons, Amresh and Sanjeet, have already procured ad-interim bail in the case so far.
The company is engaged in bottling of manufactured country liquor. It's learnt that Amresh is mostly responsible for the operations of the bottling plant, which was started around two decades ago.
The sales tax department had registered an offence against the Jaiswals, also directors of the company, after finding contradicting evidence pertaining to their records and other documents pertaining to production, sales and stocks. It was during an audit of the returns filed by the company that the anomaly had come to fore, leading to a criminal case for evasion of VAT under relevant sections of Maharashtra Value Added Tax Rules 2005. It's reliably learnt that an official of the state excise department was also deputed to monitor the company's operation in detail.
EOW squad under API Pradeep Lande had started a probe in the case around fortnight ago and the search was conducted under the supervision of DCP Masirkar. During the search, API Lande and his squad collected documents related to production, sale, stocks and other records pertaining to the case. "It's a complicated case warranting a lot of technical expertise. The probe is at a nascent stage and we aim to delve deeper to extract crucial evidence in the case," said Lande.