IT raids, searches at Sasikala’s kin, associates continue for second day

Chennai, Nov 10 (IANS) The massive hunt for unaccounted wealth at premises of close relatives of jailed AIADMK leader V.K.Sasikala, their business associates and organisations connected to them by tax officials went on for the second successive day and is set to continue, a senior tax official on Friday.

The raid may enter third day as the searches are continuing in several premises.

For the second consecutive day on Friday, Income Tax (IT) officials continued their massive raids at around 140 premises.

"Sizeable volume of cash and documents have been seized at the searched premises. The search operation is still on. The volume and value of cash and documents seized would be known only after they are totalled after completing the entire operation," the IT official, who did not want to be identified, told IANS.

He declined to comment on the reports about seizure of good quantity of gold from one of the searched premises.

"In some places, the search operations have ended and in many places, it is still going on," he added.

According to reports, supporters of V. Divakaran, brother of Sasikala, obstructed the IT officials from entering his college in Tiruvarur district.

The supporters insisted that they would allow the IT officials only after checking them and their bags, arguing that the raid is politically motivated and the officials can plant something and then allege that those items were seized from the premises.

Later, police removed them.

The searches were conducted in connection with unexplained routing of cash post-demonetisation through shell companies allegedly connected to Sasikala and Dinakaran.

The IT department will look at the routing of funds within India whereas other agencies will look into the routing of money outside India, the official said.

According to him, the nature of this search operation "is different" and it is not just searching the premises and seizing unaccounted cash.

"We have information about shell companies and the search is in connection with their operations," he said.

Whether the bank accounts of the searched persons, companies would be "frozen to detect suspect transactions and other actions", would be taken only after collating the data from the seized papers.

On Thursday, a team of around 1,800 IT officials knocked at the doors of 187 premises-residences, offices and farm houses -- to carry out one of their biggest searches on the members, business establishment and business associates of one single family, that is, Sasikala's.

The places raided included the residence of M. Natarajan, Sasikala's husband, in Thanjavur, Kodanad Tea Estate belonging to late Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J. Jayalalithaa, Jazz Cinemas, Midas Distilleries, Sharada Paper and Boards, Senthil Group of Companies, Nilgiri Furniture in Coimbatore, Jaya TV, Namadhu MGR and several other premises in Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, Hyderabad and Bengaluru.

The operation was kept secret, so much so that the raiding tax officials hired private cabs and had pasted wedding stickers on the windscreens of vehicles involved in the operation so as not to arouse suspicion.