I-T sleuths seize ₹10 lakh from Durai Murugan's house

Income-tax sleuths on Saturday seized around ₹10 lakh of unaccounted cash, from the house of DMK treasurer Durai Murugan at Katpaddi, in Vellore district of Tamil Nadu, that was allegedly kept to influence voters.

Director General of Police TK Rajendran on Friday (March 29) evening had issued orders to Vellore SP Pravesh Kumar to conduct a search operation at Durai Murugan’s house, whose son Kathir Anand is the DMK’s Lok Sabha candidate in Vellore.

Kumar passed on the instructions to the district collector, who is also the returning officer of the district. Based on the collector’s orders, police along with a static surveillance team raided Durai Murugan’s house on Friday night, when Murugan and his son were away.

DMK cadre rushed to Murugan’s house and demanded that the poll officers show the order copy of the raid. The officials who had come without an order, left the premises and the matter was handed over to the I-T department.

Subsequently, on the recommendation of the state DGP, I-T officials issued an order after which the raid began at 5.30 am on Saturday. It lasted for more than five hours and yielded ₹19 lakh cash. As Kathir had stated that he had ₹9 lakh on hand in his nomination papers, I-T officials seized the rest of the money which lacked proper documents.

I-T officials also seized a few documents which allegedly had details of the electors in the Vellore Lok Sabha constituency. They also went on to raid the school and colleges run by Kathir Anand.

Tamil Nadu is scheduled to have the Lok Sabha and bypolls for 18 Assembly seats on April 18.