‘Systematic efforts are being made to malign the present CBDT chief Pramod Chandra Mody’.
New Delhi: Central government agencies, which have been provided with a trove of documentary proof from private sources, have started investigating into what they believe are systematic efforts being put by a few present and former Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers linked with the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) to malign the present CBDT chief Pramod Chandra Mody. This “vilification campaign”, officials claimed, was also being done to damage sitting political entities.
The documents accessed by The Sunday Guardian show at least two “very senior” IRS officers (one of whom recently retired) and another officer, who was demoted in 2019, engaged in a professional and personal relationship with an individual who had to go to prison in an arms case.
Among these three IRS officers, one had made headlines a few months ago, alleging irregular conduct against his/her senior.
The Sunday Guardian has also accessed pictures of a Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax in close company with a woman of foreign nationality while holidaying in a beach town of India.
As per government sources, a sustained media campaign to vilify P.C. Mody by tying his conduct to one of India’s wealthiest business houses was being orchestrated by a few IRS for personal reasons.
Official sources confirmed to The Sunday Guardian that an investigation was already happening at multiple levels to ascertain the other individuals (whose name had not come out yet) who were colluding to influence the pending cases with the CBDT that run into thousand of crores and to install people of their choices at influential position within the CBDT. The serving and former IRS officers, who have been called for questioning in the recent past in the matter, had sought “adjournment”, but the same was not granted by the investigating officers of the CBDT as the matter was “urgent”.
Mody was given a second extension of six months, in August last year, and is scheduled to retire in a month if another extension is not given.