The Income Tax Department on Tuesday searched the offices and other properties of Indian-origin South African businessperson Ajay Gupta and his brothers in New Delhi, Saharanpur in Uttar Pradesh, and in Uttarakhand’s Dehradrun district, Reuters reported.
The Gupta family is at the centre of a corruption scandal involving former South African President Jacob Zuma. The country’s anti-corruption watchdog has accused them of using their proximity to Zuma to influence policy and amass wealth. They are suspected to have moved their money into India.
The police in South Africa had raided the Guptas’ home in Johannesburg, days after the African National Congress had announced its decision to remove Zuma from the presidency.
The department had received specific intelligence inputs about the large-scale construction of a Shiva temple by the Gupta brothers in Saharanpur, Amrendra Kumar, a senior Income Tax official in Uttar Pradesh told The Times of India.
“The temple is spread on a huge piece of land and an investment of over Rs 100 crore has been made in the project,” Kumar said. “Our probe is to find the source of the money and scan through transactions of the company which is building the project in Saharanpur. The Gupta brothers will have to answer these questions: how and from where has the money come.”
In Saharanpur, the department also conducted searches in the family’s office in Haqeeqat Nagar, their sprawling houses in the Mission Compound locality and their ancestral house in Old Rani Bazar. The officials raided the Guptas’ bungalow on Curzon Road in Dehradun and a helipad that they own.
Raj Kumar Raju, the secretary of the Shivdham temple trust, told reporters he did not know why the Income Tax department conducted searches at the temple. “Every penny that has come from abroad for the construction of this temple has been accounted for and we have nothing to worry about,” Raju claimed. “Whatever is happening in South Africa is also a political witch-hunt because of the Gupta brothers’ close links to the former president.”
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