Tax search may be damp squib

Officials recall how similar searches on NTC mills a few years back had thrown up nothing incriminating

Officials recall how similar searches on NTC mills a few years back had thrown up nothing incriminating

Don't read too much into it. It could be nothing, after all.

That's the taxman's guarded warning about searches conducted at IPL chief Lalit Modi's Worli office.

A senior I-T official recalled that a few years ago, similar searches had been conducted at National Textile Corporation's mills. "They had thrown up nothing incriminating. The IPL searches could go the same way," he said.

IPL boss Lalit Modi interacts with the media outside his Worli office around 3.30 am yesterday, after a seven-hour-long interrogation by I-T officials.

We have documents

Senior I-T officials supervising the inquiry in Mumbai said, "We have collected documents pertaining to the Kochi IPL equity bid and will go through the bidding process to know the partners behind the bid and their source of equity."

Officials said that in the NTC probe, the parties involved in the bid furnished evidence to establish the source of funds.

"So far, there are no specific leads in the IPL case, and it will be quite cumbersome to leaf through each document, record statements and gather leads," the official said.

He added that since I-T returns for the financial year 2009-10 were yet to be filed, the only way to get information was to interrogate individuals concerned.

Ruling out the possibility of probing the bids of other IPL teams, the official said the need for such an exercise could come up only if any such link crops up subsequently.

It is yet unclear if taxmen will probe details of documents gutted in a recent blaze at Modi's Juhu bungalow.

"A few documents and computers were destroyed," said H Parab, Additional Deputy Fire Officer.

Fire officials said, on condition of anonymity, that the documents pertained to IPL matches.

A senior official from CBDT, Delhi said, "Even if documents were gutted, there are ways of collating information from other sources.
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As we have not found any concrete evidence, it would be premature to draw any conclusion."

(Inputs from Somita Pal)