Rs. 13 crore seized from Delhi firm

Cached notes: Stacks of notes found in a law firm in New Delhi during a raid on Saturday night. :PTI

Shubhomoy Sikdar, TH, NEW DELHI, DECEMBER 12, 2016: In a search which started late on Saturday night and continued till Sunday evening, officials of the Delhi Police and the Income-Tax Department seized over Rs. 13 crore in cash from the office of a law firm in South Delhi’s Greater Kailash-I area.

The office of the T & T law firm is located in a multi-storey building called “White House”.

Of the money seized, Rs. 2.65 crore was in new Rs. 2,000 notes, raising questions of how the firm got such a huge amount, despite the withdrawal cap.

The firm’s promoter and top lawyer, Rohit Tandon, is learnt to have told investigators that the bundles of cash recovered belonged to his clients and was not black money. The police said Rs. 7 crore was in Rs. 1,000 denomination, three crore in Rs. 100 notes and the remaining in Rs. 50 and Rs. 500 denominations.

Joint Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ravindra Yadav said: “Only the caretaker was present when we raided the premises. We recovered two currency counting machines. Further investigation will be undertaken by the I-T Department.”

The joint team entered the office around 9.30 p.m.

“There was initial resistance but we told the caretaker that we had come to check whether there was any unaccounted-for cash on the premises,” Mr. Yadav said.

Notes found in bathroom

The caretaker told them that cash was kept in separate rooms on the ground floor.

“Upon checking, we found bundles of Rs. 500, 1,000 and 100, along with the new currency, ” he said.

Money, it is alleged, was found stuffed in cupboards, trunks and even inside a bathroom.

The search continued till Sunday evening when Mr. Tandon arrived and was quizzed. The agencies are probing whether shell companies had been used to route funds.

Nearly two months ago, there were reports that when the tax department searched the premises of Mr. Tandon it had found documents related to Rs. 19 crore in unaccounted money, which had been kept as fixed deposit in a bank.

There were also reports of him declaring unaccounted income of over Rs. 125 crore, taking even the I-T officials by surprise.

Mr. Tandon was unreachable when The Hindu tried to contact him.