Infosys racketeers busted by taxpayer who made recording of bribe call

Bengaluru: The man who was the lynchpin of the income tax refund racket in Infosys was a techie who was appreciated within the company for his data collaboration skills.

Devishwar, from Hyderabad, was therefore deputed to an assignment with the Income Tax Department’s Centralised Processing Centre (CPC). He was assisted by two other techies, Kalyan and Prakash, both also from Hyderabad.

They ganged up to form a trip who would call up tax-payers and offer to hasten their refunds if they were paid bribes. The Electronic City police of Bengaluru busted their racket and the company has fired them for misuse of company policy.

In order to process and disburse Income Tax refund claims, the trio were given access to a database with access to vital information like the Permanent Account Numbers (PAN), office and residential address besides contact numbers of income tax-payers.

Devishwar Reddy hit upon the idea of issuing IT claims at the earliest but for a reward, said a senior police officer.

“The trio made phone calls to those waiting for IT refunds and promised them that their claim would be processed at the earliest provided they pay them four per cent of the proceeds. Normally, the IT refund claim takes about three to five months but the trio assured the same within a fortnight,” explained the officer.

The luck ran out when one tax-payer refused to pay the bribe and shared an audio recording of his conversation with the accused with the IT officials who held an internal enquiry and then approached the police.

Police have found that the call record details of the accused were not available as they had destroyed the sim card and the handset used to make calls to their possible client’. The accused have been released on bail. Police are seeking their custody for further probe, added the officer.