I-T sleuths freeze Jan Dhan account with Rs 40 lakh

Hours before Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted Jan Dhan account holders not to refund the money of the corrupt who had deposited their ‘black money’ into the  bank accounts of the poor, the Income Tax Department here froze the account of one such beneficiary Sitara Devi of Ara in Bihar’s Bhojpur district.

A resident of Nehru Nagar in Ara, Sitara had reportedly opened a Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan account in Dena Bank in May 2015. But within seven days of the November 8 announcement of the demonetisation move, her bank balance, which was merely Rs 500, swelled to Rs 40 lakh.

When Sitara frequently visited the bank to deposit cash post demonetisation, the bank officials grew suspicious. They asked Sitara about the source of such a huge quantum of cash being deposited every alternate day. But she would everytime evade the bank officials’ queries.

Eventually, the bank informed the Income Tax Department, which, in turn, later quizzed Sitara husband’s Ajay Yadav, a milk man. When I-T sleuths asked Ajay how come the cash balance in his wife’s bank account swelled so fast, he told his interrogators that he had earned the amount through the sale of milk.