First Ever Biggest Income Tax raids on 4 top Kannada film stars; 3 movie producers in Bengaluru :
Highlights :
* It shocker to celebrity.
* Biggest income tax raids on film industry.
* Marathon raids sting sandalwood.
* A rude shock to sandalwood .
* Yash’s wife Radhika also quizzed.
* Actors quizzed about their remuneration.
* Raids likely to continue next two days.
* Raids to continue all nights.
In a shocking raid by IT department today morning, several Sandalwood stars including Yash, Sudeep, Shivarajkumar, Puneeth Rajkumar, KFG producer Vijay Kirgandur and others have been subjected to interrogation.
The raid took place around 6am in the morning, involving 6 Senior IT officials with 200 IT sleuths.
The raids were conducted at Sadashivanagar,Kathriguppe J P Nagar, Nagarbhavi,Mahalakshmi layout,Gayathrinagar,
The officials arrived in private cars and presented the actors and producers with search warrants. Popular star Yash has acted the lead role in the latest multi-lingual blockbuster KGF, which was made on a budget of Rs 80 crore, and is reporting robust earnings from screens.An IT official said they had been keeping a watch on some of their transactions for the past one year, and their real estate investments. Some of the producers are also real-estate barons.
Actors Shivarajkumar and Puneeth Rajkumar, sons of Kannada veteran actor late Dr.Rajkumar, and Yash and Sudeep came under the I-T scanner, officials told media persons,as the bigwigs of the state film industry woke up to the knocks of Income Tax officials on their doors.
The raids were carried out across 25 locations in the state and involved around 200 sleuths,with 15 travel agency vehicles were hired.
The local police was not informed before conducting raid the IT officials have done a preparation of raids meticulously and they kept it very confidentially they even procured a search warrant from the court yesterday only as they were tipped off that huge tax evasion has happened so based on the information they have conducted a simultaneous raids on the houses of sandalwood actors and producers.
Later on as the raids got continued and as fans of stars and producers gathered in huge numbers local police with additional force as CAR and KSRP platoons were deployed for no untoward incident take place and to maintain law and order. Sources says that the accumulation of black money within sandalwood to be the reason for the shocking raid.
Rockline’ Venkatesh, C.R. Manohar and Vijay Kiraganduru are the film producers whose residences were raided, the officials said.
What comes across more shocking is the fact that the raid took place after the grand success of the film KFG. As per the latest box office reports, Yash’s movie has collected over Rs 154 Crores worldwide, withing two weeks since its release. The huge sum of money involved alone seems to have lured the IT department. Hat-trick star Shivarajkumar is the son-in-law of former chief minister late S. Bangarappa.
‘Power-star’ Puneeth Rajkumar shot to fame for his role as a child artist in the Kannada movie Bettada Hoovu and had won a National Film Award.
Sudeep, who anchored the Kannada version of Big Boss, was hailed for his role in the movie Eega (Makkhi in Hindi) and the multi-lingual Baahubali, which broke new grounds in Indian cinema and created records in box office collections.
Actor Sudeep, told media persons that,income tax raid cannot be possible as it is something do with the economy only I will be worried if I am done something wrong.
Rockline Venkatesh is a relative of Congress MLA and film producer Munirathna.
He had co-produced the Hindi movie Bajrangi Bhaijaan.
Vijay is the producer of the latest blockbuster movie KGF, starring Yash, Srinidhi Shetty and Anant Nag.
The film hit 2,460 screens all over the country on December 21 and is reportedly a box office hit, not only in Kannada, but also in the Hindi and Tamil versions.C.R. Manohar has his own production house called Tanvi Films. He has produced Kannada and Telugu movies.
His latest movie was The Villain, starring Shivarajkumar, Sudeep and Mithun Chakraborty.
The raids on one of the places, the I-T sources said, unearthed a huge cache of cash and gold ornaments.
The I-T officials had brought with them a goldsmith to evaluate the ornaments.
As per the latest reports, the officials are currently interrogating Shivarajkumar’s residence in Manyata Tech Park. Also, it has been said that around 25 celebrities from the industry have been targeted in today’s raid.
This is considered to be the biggest IT attack on the Kannada film industry till date! All the actors and producers including Yash, Puneeth Rajkumar, Shivarajkumar, Sudeep and Vijay Kirgandur are yet to issue a statement as the verification by the officials is currently taking place.
Actor Yash, told media persons that,There is no reason for me to be worried the IT officials are just carrying out their routine procedure.They will just scrutinize documents and the bank balance as per their procedure I know my finance are in order.why should I be worried? This is the first time in my life that I’m being raided I’m rather surprised we will Co-operate with the officials and let them carry out their routine procedure.We must not assume things like the raids being associated with the success of my life KGF let’s wait and watch till there’s more clarity he added.
Income tax officials said they will continue the search for 2 or 3 more days. Director General (Investigations) BR Balakrishnan and Principal Commissioner (Investigation) R Ravichandran supervised the search operations.
“We have covered big actors and all major movie producers, and will be verifying their documents,” an IT official said.
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PRAMESH S JAIN
PRAMESH S JAIN
