Politician-realtor held for tax evasion of Rs 5.4 cr

Team Udayavani, Mar 28, 2019, 1:21 PM IST

Bengaluru: The Income Tax Department, Karnataka & Goa, on Wednesday, arrested R Prabhakar Reddy, a realtor and politician associated with the JD(S) for over non-payment of taxes. His is the third arrest made by the Income Tax Department in recent days for tax defaults.

During an IT raid conducted at his residence in July 2011, Reddy had admitted large sums of undisclosed income in view of the evidences unearthed during the search proceedings. The tax payable was determined to be Rs 5.4 crore. Though many tax recovery notices were issued to Reddy he failed to pay the dues and remained non-compliant.

Earlier in February, the Central Crime Branch had arrested Reddy in connection with land grabbing and cheating cases after conducting raids at over 40 locations linked to him and recovered documents of over 300 properties.

The Income Tax Department in a release said, “A prominent taxpayer who is well known in the city and had once contested State Assembly and Parliament elections for a prominent political party was arrested today for default in paying taxes. A search and seizure operation was conducted in the case of the tax defaulter. The tax defaulter has contested in Vidhan Sabha Elections of Karnataka twice and also contested in Lok Sabha Elections.”

“Further, on examination of the ITS/AIR details (intelligence data base of the Income Tax Department based multi-agency data collection and analysis) and election affidavit filed before the Election Commission of India for the year 2013 and 2018, it was noticed that the tax defaulter was involved in various real estate transactions but did not use funds generated out of real estate business to pay tax,” the statement said.

A final show-cause notice was issued to Reddy recently. However since he failed to comply, the department arrested him and handed him over to the Bengaluru Central Prison, Parappana Agrahara.

He will be prosecuted by the Economic Offences Court, I-T Department said.