In one of the bigger cash hauls in recent times, income tax sleuths in Hyderabad unearthed ₹10.5 crore from the premises of Sri Chaitanya Educational Institutions.
Of this, around ₹3 crore cash was stashed in one of the girls’ hostels of the group in Vijayawada. Searches that started on March 4 concluded on Friday in Hyderabad, Vijayawada and Mumbai.
According to TimesOfIndia sources said in the searches, sleuths found bogus expenditure records as well as many cash receipts. Sri Chaityanya runs around 300 colleges and 340 schools in which lakhs of students study every year.
Simultaneous searches were also conducted on the premises of industrialist Lingamaneni Ramesh, a close aide of former Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
Sources said Lingamaneni had not met I-T sleuths during the searches. He was searched as investigators found that he took loans from Sri Chaitanya.
The sleuths also seized documents from the premises of the Mumbai-based Varsity Education Management Private Limited, which is a decade-old company.
Searches were conducted at the residences and offices of the directors Boppana Sushmasri, B Seema and Yalamanchili Sridhar and other key persons of the company.
As Dr B S Rao, the founder of Sri Chaitanya group, had a brief illness I-T sleuths questioned the current directors.
