Penalty worth Rs82 lakh imposed Bathinda, November 7 Acting on a tip-off, a team of the Excise and Taxation Department sleuths (GST mobile wing) conducted a raid and seized four tobacco-laden trucks near Fatehgarh Sahib. Ad drivers could not furnish bills/bilty for the products, officials impounded all four vehicles and imposed a penalty of Rs82.25 lakh. A senior official privy to the raid said the department had received the information that tobacco products would be transported from Delhi to four districts in the state. He added that the information shared also mentioned that these products were being transported without any bills/bilty. “Upon receiving these inputs, we laid a trap and intercepted four trucks laden with tobacco and chewable tobacco, including pan masala. These trucks were carrying the goods to Ludhiana, Amritsar, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur and Batala. The truck drivers were stopped near Fatehgarh Sahib. They could produce invoices of different dealers but they did not have bills for the tobacco products being carried by them,” said the official. Rajesh Sharma, assistant commissioner, state taxes (mobile wing Bathinda-2), said: “An opportunity was given to owner of goods to produce required documents but the latter failed to do so. So, a penalty of Rs82,25,474 was imposed. Vehicles, along with goods, are in our custody and will only be released after recovery of the penalty from the owner.” The proceedings in the matter were done under the supervision of Tejbir Singh, state tax officer (mobile wing) and Simardeep Singh Brar, state tax officer (mobile wing, Bathinda-1). Navdeep Kaur Bhinder, director (investigation), stated that on directions of the Excise and Taxation Commissioner to curb the tax evasion through movement of goods, few high-rated commodities such as tobacco were put under scanner.

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