IAS officer with 220 bank accounts, assets worth millions

RAIPUR - An Indian Administrative Officer (IAS) in Chhattisgarh has been found to have a staggering 220 bank accounts and assets worth millions of rupees. This was revealed after the income tax department raided his residence here, official sources said Saturday.

The IT department raided the houses of some IAS officers and businessmen in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in the past two days.

Chhattisgarh’s Bharatiya Janata Party government is waiting for a final report from the IT department about Agriculture Secretary B.L. Agrawal’s assets to initiate action against him.

IT officials searched the residence of Agrawal as well as business establishments of his close relatives Thursday.

On Friday, the officials similarly raided his chartered account Sunil Agrawal’s house and came across documents suggesting that the IAS officer had amassed assets disproportionate to his known income.

The officer had at least 220 bank accounts, several of them opened on fake names and addresses, and a few in the names of his domestic helps.

Efforts by IANS to contact B.L. Agrawal failed. A man who answered his mobile telephone said Agrawal was “busy in a meeting”.

Income Tax department sources said they were analysing the documents and papers they seized. Some documents suggest he might be involved in hawala transactions, the sources said.

The Madhya Pradesh government had Friday suspended a Bhopal-based IAS couple — women and child development department principal secretary Tinu Joshi and her husband Arvind Joshi, principal secretary of the jail and parliamentary affairs department. IT department found Rs.3 crore (Rs.30 million) in unaccounted cash in a raid on their residence Thursday.

Brajesh Gupta, Director General of Investigations (I-T) for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, said bank notes stuffed in a suitcase were recovered from the residence of the couple.

The IT department had also conducted simultaneous raids in Madhya Pradesh at the houses of retired commissioner of the Bhopal Municipal Corporation M.A. Khan, and residences of road and bridge development engineer R.D. Chaudhary, superintending engineer with Power Works Department Deepak Asai, his wife Jyoti Asai, and businessmen Sunil Agrawal and Pawan Agrawal dealing in fertilisers besides ICICI Bank manager Seema Jaiswal and bank agent Bharti Bhasne’s.