1,400 crore GST evasion: Somesh Kumar comes under CID scanner

Hyderabad: The Crime Investigation Department (CID), which had registered cases in connection with financial irregularities in the commercial taxes department, are likely to question officials of the department, including former chief secretary Somesh Kumar.

Earlier, the Hyderabad Crime Central Station (CCS) had registered cases in connection with an alleged commercial taxes (GST) fraud to the tune of `1,400 crore. The case was later transferred to the CID.

The CID re-registered cases and is now set to question the staff of the commercial tax department.

The GST fraud pertains to the case of Big Leap Technologies and Solutions, which registered itself as a manpower supplier. It passed an input tax credit worth `25.51 crore without actually paying any tax to the government.

"As per instructions from the then special chief secretary Somesh Kumar, they gave a format to IIT-Hyderabad for capturing all four discrepancies such as IGST, CGST, SGST and cess and they were not aware as to why IGST and cess notices were not generated. After collecting details in the preliminary probe, the CID will question the employees. Somesh Kumar is one of the accused," sources said.

It was revealed that the project investigator Prof. Sobhan Babu took instructions through a WhatsApp group, "Special Initiatives" with Somesh Kumar, S.V. Kasi Visweswara Rao, additional commissioner (ST) and A. Siva Rama Prasad, deputy commissioner and professor Sobhan Babu as its members.

IIT-Hyderabad is a service provider for software development to the commercial tax department and its role was to perform analytics and generate discrepancies based on returns filed by taxpayers registered in Telangana.

But official negligence has caused a loss of `1,400 crore in tax evasion.