New Delhi, Dec 7 (IANS): As part of its search-and-survey action in cases of leading coal traders of Assam since December 4, the Income Tax Department is conducting the process at 21 locations in Guwahati, Digboi, Margherita, and Delhi.

The main allegation pertains to routing of accommodation entries of more than Rs 23 crore and Rs 62 crore in the form of non-genuine share capital and non-genuine unsecured loans respectively, through certain Kolkata-based shell companies. All this was done by alleged suppression of its true net profit.

During the course of the search action, the IT Department has come across out-of-books transactions. Handwritten documents/diaries regarding cash transactions have been seized, which are not reflected in the regular books of accounts.

Such transactions detected so far across all the locations total upwards of Rs 150 crore, of which payments of more than Rs 100 crore were found to be violative of the Income-tax Act, 1961. Such seized documents are voluminous and are being studied further, the department said in a statement.

Further, loan transactions made in cash were also found to be more than Rs 10 crore. Stock difference of more than Rs 7 crore was found and no cogent explanation regarding the same was provided.

In the office of the Kolkata-based shell company acquired by one of the entities of the group, no books of accounts and ROC mandated documents were found, proving the same to be a bogus entity used only to route unaccounted income of the group.

Unexplained cash of approximately Rs 3.53 crore has also been unearthed during the search, which has been seized by the department. Cash investments in share capital during demonetisation period were also detected.

Further investigations are going on.