Former commercial taxes additional commissioner SV Kasi Visweswara Rao, deputy commissioner Sivaram Prasad, IIT-Hyderabad assistant professor Sobhan Babu, and Prianto Technologies, too, have been named in the FIR.
Published Jul 29, 2024 | 1:34 PM ⚊ Updated Jul 29, 2024 | 1:41 PM
Former chief secretary S Somesh Kumar. (X)
An FIR was filed against former chief secretary S Somesh Kumar and four others at Hyderabad’s Central Crime Police station for allegedly violating the GST Act.
Besides Kumar, former commercial taxes additional commissioner SV Kasi Visweswara Rao, deputy commissioner Sivaram Prasad, IIT-Hyderabad assistant professor Sobhan Babu, and Prianto Technologies, too, have been named in the First Information Report.
The police, probing the ₹1.400 crore GST scam, arraigned Kumar as accused number five in the case. The GST Act violation case was registered based on a complaint by Ravi Kanuri, Commercial Taxes joint commissioner, central computer wing, on 26 July.
“On preliminary verification of 11 cases, masked by IIT-Hyderabad, evasion of more than ₹400 crore was identified. One such masked case was that of Telangana State Beverages Corporation Limited. Furthermore, evasion of more than ₹1000 crore was unearthed through fraudulent cases detected in the state,” the complaint said.
Officials stumbled upon the multi-crore scam when they found that Big Leap Technologies, which provides human resources support to the Commercial Taxes Department, secured an input tax credit of ₹25.51 crore, allegedly without paying tax.
Interestingly, the scrutiny module, which IIT-H had developed, did not detect tax evasion by Big Leap Technologies. IIT-H has been hired by the Commercial Taxes Department as its technology service provider whose job was to detect and report tax evasion by companies by analysing the data.
The Commercial Taxes Department then got to the bottom of tax evasion, and its extent and checked if any other companies were also involved.
The departmental inquiry revealed that the software was tweaked under the oral instructions of the then commercial taxes additional commissioner SV Kasi Visweswara Rao, and deputy commissioner Sivaram Prasad, facilitating the evasion of the GST by the companies.
When asked to explain, they said it was done at the behest of Kumar.
The Commercial Taxes Department wrote to the audit department which in turn replied that the entire data was under the control of IIT-H and there was enough scope for tampering with it.
The officials then had a meeting with C-DAC and IIT-H in which it was revealed that a WhatsApp group – Special Initiatives – was used to send instructions to IIT-H Assistant Professor Babu.
Other members of the WhatsApp group were Somesh Kumar, Kasi Visweswara Rao, and Sivaram Prasad.
The department found out that the group was active till February 2024, and asked Visweswara Rao and Sivram Prasad to submit chat history and videos shared on the WhatsApp group. The officials found out that there were instructions in the group to allow evasion of GST.
The Commercial Taxes Department wrote to the IIT-H to replace the project investigator Babu. The IIT-H replied that it had followed the instructions of the then-chief secretary Kumar.
It had even sent some documentary evidence also in support of its claim. Meanwhile, C-DAC, which submitted its final report, said that data relating to transactions of the 75 companies had disappeared, which implied that tax evasion did take place.
In the end, the complaint said masking of data took place about taxpayers, and instructions were issued not to cancel fraudulent cases.
“The prosperity data about the Commercial Taxes Department was made available to a third-party IP. WhatsApp chat history, work being done by employees of Plianto Technologies Private Limited but claiming to be on the rolls of M/s IIT -H (with whom an agreement was entered into by the Commercial Taxes Department), pointed towards criminal conspiracy and the aspect of pecuniary benefits accruing to the individuals involved in the case cannot be ruled out,” the complaint said.
(Edited by Majnu Babu)
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