Sonepur: Naveen Bag, a farmer in Sonepur district got the biggest shock of his life recently. The farmer, who ekes out a living by toiling in his one acre agricultural land, recently received a notice for alleged Goods and Services Tax (GST) evasion to the tune of a whopping Rs 10 crore.
Naveen felt the ground under his feet slipping upon reading out the figures which he had never counted in his life before.
It was only after some GST officials raided his humble accommodation on charges of the tax evasion, the poor farmer learnt that a firm --‘Bag & Bag’-- had been set up using his name.
According to Naveen, he had shared the photocopies of his Aadhar card, voters identity card and other documents with one Dilip Meher around eight months ago to avail loans from a bank. He now suspects that his identification documents had been misused, leading to the fraud.
Following the detection of the fraud, Naveen has lodged a complaint at the Rampur police station.
“The agricultural land is registered in the name of my father. We are completely dependent on farming and we are completely ignorant how the company was set up in my name,” Naveen told OTV.
However, this is not the first time such massive irregularities and instances of GST evasion have come to the light in Odisha.
On November 11, a delivery boy working with a private company in Rourkela had received a notice for Rs 10 lakh GST evasion.
Preliminary investigations had revealed that a fake company by the name of ‘Manorama Trading’ was set up using the name of the delivery boy and fraudulent transactions of over Rs 70 lakh had been carried out.
Similarly, a man residing in Sector-20 area of Rourkela was also charged with gross tax liability under Section 74(5) for allegedly receiving taxable goods amounting to Rs 23.96 crore and further availing Rs 4.31 crore under CGST and SGST on the basis of fake invoices.