The income-tax adjudication authority has passed a confiscation order under the amended Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act on immovable properties spread over 100 acres in Igatpuri that belonged to fugitive diamond merchant Mehul Choksi, a Times of India report said. An order like this for an immovable property in the I-T department is rare and has not occurred in the recent past, as per the news report.
I-T officials will now be taking these 50 land parcels in their possession for auction. The act was amended in 2016 and the I-T department attached the Igatpuri properties in 2020.
The land parcels were reportedly purchased in the name of Nashik Multi Services SEZ Ltd in Mundegaon village in Igatpuri, Nashik district, and was paid for through Choksi’s company Gitanjali Gems.
Choksi is an absconding accused in the Punjab National Bank (PNB) fraud case. Since no one turned up to challenge the I-T action, the department concluded the entire process in record two years.
The diamond baron and his nephew Nirav Modi had fled India in the first week of January 2018 weeks before the scam in the Punjab National Bank rocked the Indian banking industry. Modi escaped to Europe and was finally held in London where he is contesting his extradition to India, while Choksi took citizenship of Antigua and Barbuda in 2017 where he was staying since his escape from Delhi.
While the CBI and ED are investigating Choksi along with his firm for defrauding Rs 6,200 crore from PNB through fraudulent letter of undertaking, the directorate of income-tax (investigation), Mumbai wing, is probing him for tax evasion and under the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act.
A source in the I-T department told TOI that although I-T had attached cash and other assets under the act in different cases this was the first time the confiscation order has been passed on immovable properties under the act after its amendment in 2016.
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