Found evidence of huge suppressed income: IT officials on Anurag Kashyap, Taapsee Pannu raids
New Delhi/IBNS: Facing criticisms, the Income Tax Department on Thursday informed that they have recovered irregularities worth crores of rupees in ongoing raids on filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, actor Taapsee Pannu and others, who are the biggest critics of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
According to tax officials, they have found issues with Rs. 5 crore cash received by Pannu and Rs. 300 crore income by Kashyap's former production house among other problems during their raids.
Neither of them has responded to the charges yet.
The Income Tax department Wednesday raided the residences of filmmakers Anurag Kashyap, Vikash Bahl and actor Taapsee Pannu.
The raids were conducted in connection with Kashyap's production house Phantom Films.
Parallel raids have been conducted in 20 other locations apart from the residences of the film personalities in Mumbai and Pune, Times Now reported.
WhatsApp chat logs, emails, documents and computer peripherals were seized from various locations.
The IT officials questioned Pannu, 33, and Kashyap, 48, who were shooting in Pune.
"During the search, evidence of huge suppression of income by the leading film production house compared to the actual box office collections has been unearthed. The company officials have not been able to explain discrepancy of around ₹ 300 crore," the Income Tax Department said in a news release.
"Evidence related to manipulation and under-valuation of share transactions of the production house amongst the film directors and shareholders, having tax implication of about ₹ 350 crore has been found and is being further investigated," it said.
Pannu, a critic of the Narendra Modi government, has recently slammed the film and sports personalities for equivocally standing up to an alleged foreign propaganda over the ongoing farmers' protests.
"If one tweet rattles your unity, one joke rattles your faith or one show rattles your religious belief, then it's you who has to work on strengthening your value system not become propaganda teachers for others," the actor had tweeted after the celebrities had opposed the support to the farmers' protests by pop star Rihanna and teen climate activist Greta Thunberg.
Pannu and Kashyap were also seen together at the anti-Citizenship (Amendment) Act protests in late 2019 and early 2020.
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