MP Man Earning Rs 7,000 Slammed With Rs 134 Cr Tax Notice, Investigation Leads Him To Mehul Choksi

A 29-year-old from Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh was slammed with an income tax notice asking him to explain transactions of Rs 134 crores made to a business account which was opened with his Permanent Account Number (PAN) in Mumbai in 2011-12.

Ravi Gupta, on receiving a notice from the IT Department, learnt that a transaction of ₹134 crores was made through the account of a company with a private bank's branch in Mumbai between September 9, 2011, and February 13, 2012.

"I was hardly 21 when these transactions were made. I had not been to Mumbai or Gujarat in 2011 or 2012. I was then working with a private firm in Indore, earning ₹7,000 a month, which is non-taxable," Gupta said, as reported by The Times Of India.

Gupta has written to the MP cyber cell, Maharashtra Police, Prime Minister's Office, and to the Income Tax officers seeking clarification and urging them to clear him of this tax recovery case.

Under a pretext of not having a taxable income, Gupta ignored the tax notices that were served to him twice, one on March 30, 2019, and then again in July.

When he visited the income-tax offices in Mumbai to inform them of the misinformation, the I-T department threatened to attach his properties for recovery of the dues.

Believing it to be a case of money laundering, he started his own investigation to trace the route of the transactions of the firm which led him to the absconding jeweller Mehul Choksi and his nephew Nirav Modi.

The two accused in the Rs 12,700 crore Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud. Gupta claimed that the transactions were made by a Gujarat-based diamond trading company.

A senior I-T official said Ravi can file a complaint seeking a probe, reported The National Herald.

Gupta was called for by I-T department in December asking to furnish his account details, PAN card, TIN registration and firm registration in Gujarat among several other documents.

He informed that he had no connections with the diamond company and brought to their notice that the account had only his PAN with a forged signature.

"They should investigate how transactions of over ₹100 crores were made from an account that didn't have a local address," Gupta said.

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