Ahead of assembly polls in Uttar Pradesh, the Income Tax sleuths have raided more businesspersons having any association with the opposition Samajwadi Party.
On Tuesday, the IT teams raided the residence, office and project sites of Noida based real estate company Ace group. The owner of Ace group, Ajay Choudhury alias Sanjeev Nagar has been a close associate of SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav.
The IT teams have been conducting a search at 40 offices and sites of Ace group in Noida, Greater Noida and Ghaziabad. Raids have been conducted at the native village of another Noida builder Sanjeev in Baghpat. Besides, the IT sleuths have cracked down at many places in Agra and west UP as well. In Agra, IT raids are going on at the remises of the promoter of Nouva group, Har Simrat Singh Alagh.
Last week, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) teams had raided the premises of perfumer Piyush Jain in Kanpur and Kannuaj. The DGGI team had recovered Rs 177.45 crore cash from the office and residence of Piyush Jain during raids last week. Besides cash, the raid team had found 23 KG of gold and several hundred litres of sandal oil from his possession.
The DGGI team had arrested Piyush Jain after the raid and he is currently lodged in the Kanpur jail. On Sunday, the IT team had raided the whereabouts of another perfumer Pushpraj Jain who is an SP leader and member of the legislative council. The IT team has taken Pushpraj into custody.
On Tuesday, a team of IT raided the residence of builder Ajay Rathi who too is a close aide of SP Chief Akhilesh Yadav. In Agra, IT sleuths have raided the office and premises of noted shoe exporters HS Alagh, Mansi Chandra and Vijay Ahuja.
SP chief Akhilesh Yadav has termed these raids as politically motivated and aimed at targeting opposition parties. Recently, the SP Chief had requested the election commission to intervene and put an end to these raids.
