SIT set to expand ambit of probe into black money

February 10, 2015

New Delhi, Feb 10: The Supreme Court-appointed Special Investigation Team (SIT) probing the black money cases is set to widen its inquiry in view of new names of Indians with Swiss bank accounts emerging on Monday.

SIT black money

The SIT, however, said legal action would be taken only after verification of facts.

“The scope of investigation will definitely be widened due to the (emergence of) new names. We will have to identify those names and scrutinise them,” SIT Chairman Justice (retd) M B Shah was quoted as saying by a news agency.

He said there were some old names, but some new names have also come out.

“We can't take action on the basis of news reports only. We will first verify the claims from our side and then take legal action,” he said.

The revelations by a collaboration of “The Indian Express” and “Le Monde” of Paris with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) brought out names ranging from the richest Indian industrialist Mukesh Ambani, having an average joint balance of Rs 164.92 crore along with his younger brother Anil Ambani, to NRI businessman Naresh Goyal and politician Narayan Rane.

The list also included the names of Dabur Chairman Anand Chand Burman; Anurag Dalmia of Dalmia Pvt Ltd; Yash Birla Group Chairperson Yashodhara Birla, Rajan Prasad Nanda of Escorts; and Harshavardhan Neotia of the Ambuja Group.

SIT Vice-Chairman Justice (retd) Arijit Pasayat, who attended a meeting of the high-powered panel, said that it would “consider all new cases where there is evidence of black money”.

“If any new name comes and whichever way we have authentic information, we will act on it,” he said after the over-two-hour meeting, where existing cases of this nature were also reviewed.

The SIT had in December submitted a report to the apex court revealing that people on the HSBC list held Rs 4,479 crore in Swiss banks. The court had directed the Centre to ensure that the ongoing probe was completed by March this year.

It had suggested quoting PAN for cash and cheque transaction for payments over Rs 1 lakh to curb cases of slush money. Unregulated mining, Ponzi schemes, iron-ore exports, and the misuse of the export-import route, were identified as major areas prone to black money transactions.

The new names reported by the ICIJ said their records, apparently obtained through leaks from a Geneva-based branch of the HSBC, show that there are 1,668 Indians on it, while the number of actionable cases stands at 1,195 after taking into account duplication and some other factors.

Collectively, these accounts had a balance of $4.1 billion (Rs 25,420 crore) till 2007. The SIT is likely to discuss the new data in its next meet.

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News Network
April 8,2020

Jamnagar, Apr 7: A 14-month-old baby boy, who had tested positive for coronavirus in Gujarat's Jamnagar district on April 5, died of multiple organ failure on Tuesday, said officials.

The toddler, son of a migrant labourer-couple having no recent travel history, died in the evening at a government hospital in Jamnagar, said an official release.

He was in a critical condition ever since he was admitted to the hospital, it said.

The boy, who tested positive for coronavirus two days ago, was as on ventilator support and eventually died due to multiple organ failure, said the release.

He becomes the youngest patient to succumb to COVID-19 in Gujarat, where the death toll has now gone up to 16.

The baby was the first and the only case of coronavirus infection so far in entire Jamnagar district and the youngest to be diagnosed with the disease in Gujarat.

Ever since he tested coronavirus positive, the authorities had been tracing the source of his infection.

His parents are from Uttar Pradesh and work as casual labourers in factories in the port city.

His parents, who have no travel history in the recent past, are asymptomatic (not showing symptoms) and kept under quarantine, officials said.

The locality where the couple resides in Dared village near Jamnagar city has been put under complete lockdown to check the spread of the virus, they said.

Gujarat has so far recorded 175 coronavirus positive cases and 16 fatalities.

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News Network
February 10,2020

Hyderabad, Feb 10: All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi continued his tirade against PM Modi and Amit Shah against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), National Population Register (NPR) and National Register of Citizens (NRC). "We are ready to take bullets in our chests but we will not show our papers.

We are ready to take bullets in our chests as we love our country," Owaisi said further.

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News Network
January 28,2020

Panaji, Jan 28: Bureaucrat-turned-activist Kannan Gopinathan on Tuesday said even some "RSS people" are convinced the Citizenship Amendment Act is a bad law but are keeping quiet as the NDA government at the Centre is their own baby.

Speaking in Panaji, he further said the Narendra Modi government was behaving like a "drunken teenager" which needs to be questioned or else it will end up destroying homes.

"I was detained twice in UP, kept the whole day, because they (government) do not want the questioning (of CAA). I have met so many RSS people, they also understand this...if you have this conversation, they also understand the government has done something (wrong) and they have been asked to support it," he claimed.

He said the line of thought among these RSS people (he met) was "just support it (CAA)" as they don't want an altercation because the "government is their baby".

"He (government) is not a normal baby, he is a drunken teenager. He should be asked questions because when he starts destroying, he does not destroy somebody else's home but your own home," Gopinathan said.

He also hit out at those who have been claiming that the people protesting against the CAA are unaware about the law and have not even read it.

Gopinathan claimed if one had asked supportive MPs about the CAA on the day it was passed in Parliament, several of them would not have been able to speak on it as "they would not have known what was passed, because they were not given time (to go through the bill)".

He said, earlier, such legislation was passed after several rounds of consultation but "now, by night, it becomes an Act", adding (now) "everything is a surgical strike".

Gopinathan, in a possible reference to the National Register of Citizens exercise carried out in Assam, also claimed "thousands of people are in detention centres".

"It is your fundamental right to peacefully assemble without arms, Article 19 (1) (D) (of the Constitution)," he said at a function organised by a group opposed to CAA.

Gopinathan said people "always felt they were in a democracy" because they never tried to fly, when in reality "you are in a cage".

"The moment you want to fly you realise you are in a cage," he said, adding that "we have to question, we have to ask ourselves where are we going".

"When you don't allow a person to speak against an incorrect legislation, then what is democracy? What is freedom of expression?" Gopinathan questioned.

Gopinathan, a 2012 batch AGMUT cadre Indian Administrative Service officer, was the secretary, Power Department of the Union Territories of Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli when he resigned on August 21 last year.

At the time, he had claimed the people of Jammu and Kashmir were being denied freedom of expression following abrogation of Article 370 by the Centre.

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