Hyderabad: ED raids Minister's house, documents seized

Hyderabad: The Enforcement Directorate and Income Tax departments on Wednesday carried out searches on Telangana BC Welfare and Civil Supplies Minister G Kamalakar's houses and his granite company offices in Hyderabad and Karimnagar. Sources sa id that the Minister was in Dubai with family when the raids were conducted.

Based on a complaint lodged by State BJP chief Bandi Sanjay Kumar that the Minister's company has evaded GST, the two Central agencies raided the Kalamakar's offices. Sources said that the officials broke open the doors of the Minister's house in Karimnagar and seized some important documents. Raids were conducted on the office of Swetha Granites in Mankammathota, owned by the Minister in his native Karimnagar town. In the complaint, Sanjay and BJP leader Perala Sekhar alleged that several granite companies were avoiding payment of tax. Based on the complaint, the Centre had also issued notices to nine granite units and imposed a fine of Rs.749 crore on the granite units recently.

The Minister's company was one among the granite industries that did not pay the tax to the Union government. After verifying the records, the ED and IT have come to a conclusion that the companies violated the tax rules and allegedly diverted the money to other sources. The agencies were also probing whether any hawala transactions took place.