The Income Tax Department has unearthed black money to the tune of a whopping Rs. 800 crore in search and seizure operations carried out on three real estate developers, engaged in the business of land development as well as construction activities in the town of Kurnool and other mofussil areas of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, according to information provided by the finance ministry.

More than two dozen premises have been covered in the search operation spread over Kurnool, Ananthapur, Kadapa, Nandyal and Bellary on Jan 5 which also resulted in the seizure of unaccounted cash of Rs.1.64 crore, according to the official statement.

During the course of the search operations, several incriminating documents, such as handwritten books, agreements, etc. have been found and seized.

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Digital data has also been seized from a specialized software application as well as from other electronic gadgets. It has been found in the case of one of the assessee groups that it has been using a software which has been systematically modified to eliminate the unaccounted cash element of the consideration received and to record in the regular books of account the sale consideration that matches with registered sale price, the official statement explained.

These groups have been found to be accepting cash over and above the registered value of the properties. Such unaccounted cash is used for payments of on-money towards the purchase of lands and incurring other expenditure.

Further investigations are still in progress.