Fire at I-T department's office destroys Nirav files, department refuses
According to sources, files on the absconding Nirav Modi, Mehul Choksi, and several others wanted for economic offenses were destroyed in a major fire at the premises of the Income Tax Department in Mumbai on Friday. A conclusive report is yet to be received as the assessment of the extent of damage caused will take a few days. However, after the news went viral, the I-T department refused it.
Details of the incident
The fire broke out at the Scindia House building in South Mumbai's Ballard Estate area around 5pm on Friday, and raged on till the wee hours of Saturday. Cooling operations concluded on Saturday evening, at which point I-T and Debt Recovery Tribunal officials managed to enter the premises. Both the I-T and the Tribunal's offices were completely gutted.
Here is I-T department's statement
News reports appearing in some sections of media alleging that records/documents relating to investigation of Nirav Modi/Mehul Choksi have been destroyed in the Scindia House fire in ITOffice,Mumbai are completely false misdirected @PMOIndia @FinMinIndia @arunjaitley @adhia03
— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) June 3, 2018
Gutted documents were on economic offenders, bankrupt corporations
Sources within the I-T department revealed that documents pertaining to the investigations on Modi, Choksi, their associates, as well as documents relating to the Essar group had been destroyed in the fire. The lost documents pertained to people who were either being investigated for banking frauds or were part of bankruptcy proceedings.
Was the fire deliberately started?
The cause of the fire is unknown as of now. But, if true, further delay in the investigations can be expected, they said. Interestingly, RTI activist Anil Galgali suggested that the fire might have been deliberately started by those with vested interests. We leave it to the readers' sensibilities to decide if the fire actually destroyed the documents or not.
