IT commissioner, husband nabbed for accepting bribe worth Rs1.5 crore

Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB) officials of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) arrested a woman additional commissioner of the Income Tax (IT) department in Thane, and her husband, after the latter accepted a bribe of Rs1.5 crore from a builder, on Friday. 

Joint director (west zone) of the ACB, Rishi Raj Singh said, “Subrato Banejree, husband of Sumitra Banerjee, additional commissioner of IT, was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe amounting to Rs1.5 crore on behalf of Sumitra. Both the Banerjees have been remanded to CBI custody till April 27 by the special court on Saturday. “

Singh further said that Sumitra, an officer of the 1992 batch of the Indian Revenue Service (IRS), had been working in the Thane income department for the past two-and-a-half years, while her husband worked in a private company.

During a preliminary investigation, it was revealed that some part of the bribe amount - Rs20 lakh - was given to one of her senior officers. Sumitra later revealed that another part of the bribe - Rs10 lakh - was delivered to Anjali Bambole, assistant commissioner of the Thane IT office, said Singh, and added that they were investigating the matter. If Bambole and the senior IT officers were found guilty, they would be arrested soon, added Singh. 

In a complaint filed on April 15, the Thane builder alleged that a survey was conducted by Anjali Bambole and Sumitra Banerjee on March 24. After the survey was completed, Banerjee informed the builder that the liability of his firm would be Rs25 crore. Later, she demanded a bribe of Rs4 crore and asked the builder to pay up a tax of Rs2 crore. 

When the builder expressed the inability to pay such as huge amount, she reduced the demand of the bribery to Rs2 crore and the tax liability to Rs1.05 crore. The partners of the firm were then asked to make fake entries to build up a tax liability of Rs1.05 crore. This amount was paid to the IT department through three cheques of Rs35 lakh. 

The builder said that the first installment of the bribe was made on March 24 to Banerjee in her office while the second installment was delivered to Bambole in her cabin. On the same day, a further demand of Rs1.8 crore was made and the builder was threatened that if he failed to pay up, there would be an assessment made of firm’s accounts from previous years. 

Verification by the ACB revealed that Banerjee had demanded Rs1.80 crore in three installments to be paid on three consecutives dates. Negotiations by the builder reduced the amount from Rs1.8 crore to Rs1.5 crore, to be paid at one go.

Chembur was fixed as the place of the delivery of the bribe amount to be given to an unknown person, who it later turned out, was Subrato.

On Friday evening, Subrato got the place of delivery changed from Chembur to Vikhroli and then to Mulund. Later, while accepting the bribe at Mulund, he was nabbed.