E-Paper
IDs of many Indore residents used in GST fraud, say police
Three Gujarat residents have been booked for running an elaborate racket that fraudulently claimed what is known as an input tax credit by registering 500 fake companies using the stolen identity and address documents.
The personal information, including identity documents, of a large number of Indore residents may have been obtained by three Gujarat residents accused of a ₹700 crore Goods and Services Tax fraud, police officials in Madhya Pradesh have said.
The three suspects have been booked for running an elaborate racket that fraudulently claimed what is known as an input tax credit by registering 500 fake companies using the stolen identity and address documents.
“The cyber cell officials suspected that data of 80% of Indore’s population has been compromised as they used electricity bills of common people for registering these companies,” said a senior police officer aware of the developments in the case, asking not to be named.
The police have identified the accused as Suleman Kareem, 29, Shamsuddin Ameen Bodhani, 33 and Firoz Khan, 36, all residents of Gujarat, following a detection of the fraud by the Central GST intelligence.
Input tax credit frauds are aimed at fooling a mechanism by which the GST system attempts to check double taxation for companies. Business are allowed to reduce the tax burden of their final sales by deducting the taxes paid in procuring individual goods and services essential to their final product or service.
In this case, the suspects created a network of fake companies that generated invoices to show non-existent input taxes to have been paid. The data stolen was meant to register the fake companies.
“In our investigation, we found that people whose electricity bills were used had never registered any firm on the GST portal. The accused used the unique number of the electricity bill to register the fake company. We tracked the digital footprint of the input credit transactions to find the accused,” the MP police officer quoted above said.
Jitendra Singh, superintendent of police, cyber cell, Indore, said till now they have found that electricity bill of five persons and Aadhaar of a person who died five years ago being used to register these fake companies. “The investigation is on and we are scanning through huge personal data of residents of Indore that have been found with the accused,” he said.
The SP said that identity cards and other data of well-known businessmen, residents of Indore were also found in possession of the accused. “We suspect that they have data of a large number of the population of Indore because this was the first time that electricity bills have been used for committing fraud. We are trying to nab the other accused,” said the SP.
The cyber cell registered a case under sections 468 (forgery for purpose of cheating), 470 (forged and electronic document), 471 (using as genuine a forged document) and under the relevant section of the IT Act.
