CHENNAI: After 36 hours of non-stop raids on the Saravana Stores Enterprises retail chain and the residential premises of its owners at Thyagaraya Nagar, Income Tax officials seized a huge haul of gold, jewellery, cash and documents on Friday.An army of 500 IT officials mounted the search-and-seizure operations on Thursday morning on information that the owners of the retail chain were indulging in serious tax evasion. “We received information that they were evading tax and investing the money in stocks,” a senior IT official told Express. “We also came to know that several stocks of textiles, gold and other goods in the shops were not fully accounted,” he said. After several hours of raids across 27 business and residential establishments belonging to the families of the brothers-trio, Selvarathinam, Rajarathinam and Yogarathinam, the officials seized about eight kg of 24-carat gold bars from one place and around two kg of unaccounted personal jewellery from another. They also found `1.25 crore of unaccounted cash stashed away at another location.Besides, documents pertaining to immovable property and financial transactions were also seized, the official said. Prohibitory orders had been issued on the bank accounts of the owners and, hence, they would not be able to operate them now, he added. The seizures appear to be only the tip of the iceberg. Since assessment of the actual value of the seized gold, cash and documents were on, their exact monetary worth would be known only after the exercise was fully completed, the IT officer added.
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