Balangir, Dec 8: A sum of Rs 30 crore has been recovered from a distillery manager’s house in Odisha’s Balangir district on Friday.
The manager has been identified as Banti Sahu, manager of the Sudapada liquor factory, owned by Baldeo Sahu.
Banti had allegedly concealed the huge amount of cash in at least five bags which were unearthed by the sleuths of the IT department on Friday evening.
Earlier a total of 156 bags of cash were recovered during the Income Tax department’s raids on places linked to the Odisha-based distillery group on charges of tax evasion.
According to sources, the bags containing cash were found at Sudapada in Balangir district, and around Rs 20 crore have been counted so far, taking the total amount recovered so far to Rs 220 crore. “Of the 156 bags, only 6/7 were counted and the amount found was Rs 20 crore,” an official was quoted as saying.
The raids were launched at Sambalpur, Balangir, Titilagarh, Boudh, Sundargarh, Rourkela and Bhubaneswar, apart from Ranchi and Kolkata, on Wednesday and counting machines have been deployed to ascertain the exact amount of cash that appears to be “unaccounted”.
Around Rs 200 crore in cash was earlier seized during raids at the Balangir office of Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies, one of the biggest country-liquor manufacturers and selling companies in western Odisha. The cash was then sent to banks in two trucks for counting.
The I-T team also searched the corporate office of Boudh Distillery Pvt Ltd at Palasapalli in Bhubaneswar, the houses of some company officials, the company’s factory and office in Boudh and the Ranisati Rice Mill.
It is worth mentioning here that Baldeo Sahu & Group of Companies is in partnership with Boudh Distilleries Pvt Ltd. The former has other businesses, including Baldeo Sahu Infra Pvt Ltd (which makes fly ash bricks), Kwality Bottlers Pvt Ltd (an IMFL bottling unit), and Kishore Prasad Bijay Prasad Beverages Pvt Ltd engaged in the sale and marketing of different IMFL brands.
