The Income Tax Department has seized unaccounted cash to the tune Rs 2 crore besides foreign exchange, and unexplained gold jewellery of about Rs 2.30 crore in a search and seizure operations conducted on two major real estate developers in Ludhiana, the biggest city in Punjab, according to an official statement issued on Saturday. 

The search action initiated on Nov 16, covered around 40 premises in Ludhiana.

The major finding emanating from these search and seizure operations of both the groups is about the receipt of unaccounted cash by these groups by way of cash transactions in property deals. During the course of search proceedings documentary evidence in the nature of ‘agreement to sale’, (popularly known as ‘Biyana’ in local parlance), for certain properties have been found and seized. These documents indicate that the ‘agreement to sale’ for plots has been executed at a much higher amount as compared to the consideration disclosed in the registered sale deed of the plot, according to information provided by the Income Tax Department. 

Further, incriminating documents such as loose sheets, excel sheets showing calculation of receipt of on-money of certain property transactions, soft data, chats from mobile phones of the persons concerned, etc. have also been recovered. A preliminary analysis of the evidence clearly indicates the receipt of unaccounted cash by way of on-money on property transactions. Besides, certain other corroborative evidence supporting the receipt of on-money have also been gathered.

Investigations have also revealed that unaccounted cash expenditure has been incurred on the construction of a house of one of the key persons.

In one of the groups, defaults on compliances for the provisions of tax deduction at source have been detected with regard to payments made to the sellers of the land.

Further investigations are still in progress.