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Film stars, food chain Saravana Bhavan raided by tax dept in Karnataka, TN
The searches were carried out on Saravana Bhavan and four other popular food chains in Tamil Nadu besides Kannada film bigwigs, including actor Puneet Rajkumar.
In a major raid, Income tax sleuths carried out searches on Saravana Bhavan and four other popular food chains in Tamil Nadu on Thursday besides knocking on the doors of Kannada film bigwigs, including actor Puneet Rajkumar.
While the raids in Tamil Nadu have stunned everyone, the searches in Karnataka have sent panic waves across the Kannada film industry. For, the actors whose residences and business establishments were raided were Shiva Rajkumar, Puneet Rajkumar Sudeep and Yash.
Also on the I-T radar were producer of the blockbuster ‘KGF’, Vijay Kiragandhur, producer of ‘Villain’ CR Manohar and ‘Rockline’ Venkatesh.
A multi-national hotel chain brand, Saravana Bhavan, is being raided the second time after 2003. Other popular food chains that were raided are Anjappar Chettinad Restaurant, Grand Sweets and Hot Breads in Chennai and across Tamil Nadu.
Saravana Bhavan hotel chain is owned by P Rajagopal, a hotel baron since 1981 who has branches in 20 countries, including the UK, USA, UAE and Australia. The hotel chain had earlier faced a controversy when it was accused of sending employees to hotels in the US as skilled workers.
More than 100 tax personnel were engaged in the raids, which commenced at 7.30 am on 32 buildings of these hotel chains on posh locations of the city and its suburbs like Ambattur, Tambaram, East Coast Road and Old Mahabalipuram as well as in the districts.
According to IT department sources, they have noticed mismatches in the hoteliers’ income and the returns that they had filed.
“When we scrutinised the returns filed by these firms in the past four months, there are some discrepancies. So, we decided to launch search operations. As we monitored the hotels’ business for the last few months, the income which they have mentioned in the returns has not matched,” said a source with the I-T department.
The 54-year-old Anjappar Chettinad Restaurant owned by Rangaswamy, Kandaswamy and Marudhu Pandian has 70 outlets in Tamil Nadu and Puducherry. Meanwhile, the 40-year-old Grand Sweets hotel and sweet stall owned by G Natarajan has its branches across Tamil Nadu.
M Mahadevan, a former assistant professor with Madras University, who had launched his own bakery outlet Hot Breads a few years ago, has 20 outlets.
It is expected that the sleuths would continue the raids further on Friday as well. I-T department sources did not reveal about the documents which they have seized during Thursday raids.
In Karnataka, the target of the I-T sleuths was the film industry, which is nicknamed ‘Sandalwood’.
“Searches are being conducted at 28 locations across the state on three prominent producers of the Kannada film industry,” an IT official said requesting not to be named.
“Actors associated with these producers are also being searched at the moment,” the official said.