Wednesday, July 13 2005 18:29 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

New Delhi: Already facing CBI heat in fake stamp paper case, the scam's mastermind Abdul Karim Telgi has been slapped with Rs 121 crore as tax liability and penalty by the Income Tax department.

Income Tax department, which has also been roped in by the CBI for assessing the wealth of Telgi, assessed the income of the accused at Rs 168.59 crore, IT sources said.

They said that after making an assessment of Telgi's tax liability including penalty, he was asked to cough up a total of Rs 121 crore for his wealth.

The IT sources said Telgi, against whom CBI was preparing to file chargesheet in various cases, had filed his income tax return declaring his assets and income at meagre Rs 2.88 crore as against Rs 168.59 crore assessed by the Tax department during the last five years.

The Tax department has also started mortgaging his property to recover the dues and recently one of his properties in Bangalore was auctioned by the department for Rs 1.43 crore. The remaining properties of Telgi would be auctioned to recover the tax dues, they said.

In a bid to find the financial implication of fake stamp paper case, CBI had constituted a seven-member team to analyse the bank transactions of people involved in the scam including Telgi.

The Tax department have also raised a total demand of Rs 32.87 lakh on all the seven senior police officials arrested in connecting with the Bundgarden case of Pune.

The Tax liability includes penalty being imposed by the Tax department on them. The arrested cops include former Mumbai Police Commissioner R S Sharma, Special Inspector General Shreedar Vagal, Deputy Commissioner of Police Pradeep Sawant, Assistants Commissioner of Police M C Mulani and Gokul Pathak and Police Inspectors Dattarya Das and Vashist Andghala.

The team comprising CBI Deputy Inspectors General Arun Kumar, Prabodh Kumar, Deputy General Manager of RBI E E Karthak, Technical Officer of State Bank of India N K Handa (both are on deputation to the CBI, Superintendents of Police S Jagannathan, S K Jha and Alok Mittal later roped in the Income Tax department to assess and income of Telgi.

The committee made account-wise tabulation and analysis of debits from Telgi's bank accounts, to work out the end use of funds, which includes whether the funds have been used towards creation of assets or for laundering.

During the probe, the team liaisoned with other agencies like Directorate of Revenue Intelligence and Department of Customs to ascertain the financial implications.

The Income Tax departments also assessed the income of associates of Abdul Karim Telgi at Rs 7.6 crore, IT sources said, adding the tax liability of these persons would be raised in course of time.