Income Tax terms BS Yeddyurappa\'s diary ‘forged’

Bengaluru: The Income Tax Department, Karnataka & Goa has dismissed the controversial ‘Yeddy diaries,’ which has raised a political storm, terming it a “forged document” and a “set of loose papers”, which have no evidentiary value, said Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) and Principal Chief, Income Tax Commissioner B.R. Balakrishnan in his media interaction on Saturday. He said that the photocopies of the handwritten diary allegedly belonging to former chief minister Mr. B.S. Yeddyurappa, which was found at Congress Minister D.K. Shivakumar's during a raid on August 2, 2017 were “forged” documents and in view of various Supreme Court judgements, inadmissible evidence, “this particular diary had no evidentiary value,” he said.

Mr. Balakrishnan however, did not clarify whether the Income Tax department had tried to track down the original copy if any, of the said document. He also said that the first page that was published by ‘Caravan’ magazine, which had the alleged pay offs of Rs 150 crores to Karnataka MLAs and politicians, was not part of the documents they had seized.

“The said documents were sent to the forensic laboratory in Hyderabad and they said that unless the original documents were provided they would not be able to investigate. As per our investigation, the loose sheets were forged and were given to us as an attempt to influence some other investigation and we did not succumb to it. We have done our job in this case as well,” added the I-T chief officer.

The Congress, citing the report in ‘Caravan’, on Friday had demanded a Lokpal probe into the charge that BSY had paid Rs 1,800 crore as bribe to the party top brass, which he had dismissed as “atrocious and malicious.”

Regarding the outcome of raids at a Karnataka minister's residence, (apparently referring to Shivakumar), Balakrishnan, without mentioning his name, said that the process to confiscate the Benami property worth Rs 75 crore has been initiated.

“The immediate consequence of a benami transaction is that you lose the property. Prosecution is a different thing. We will think about that,” he added.

The DGIT later gave the details about the I-T Department’s achievements in the Karnataka-Goa region in the last one year and said the region showed collection of Rs 1.11 lakh crore. “We have carried out more than 300 surveys, resulting in detection of undisclosed income of Rs 911 crore,” said Mr Balakrishnan.