Noida: Three more gang members held in ₹10K-cr GST fraud

The Noida police said on Saturday that they have arrested three more members of a gang allegedly involved in a ₹10,000 crore Goods and Services Tax (GST) fraud that came to light in June last year, bringing the total number of people apprehended in the case to 44.

The suspects have created at least 100 fake firms in the last two years to generate fake invoices and avail input tax credit on them, said police. They sold these companies to businessmen who wanted to evade tax by availing GST input tax credit on the fake companies, said officers.

The arrested suspects were identified as Shubham Jindal, 30, Tarunn Jindal, 32, and Kaushik Jain, 35.

“The three were arrested by the Sector 20 police team on Saturday from their homes. Their names came to light during investigation into the fraud and they had been absconding since then. In January, a reward of ₹25,000 was declared on each of them by the commissionerate,” said deputy commissioner of police (crime) Shakti Avasthy.

On June 1, 2023, the Noida police claimed to have busted a gang suspected of orchestrating a ₹10,000 crore GST fraud. The gang’s operation involved registering thousands of companies under stolen or fake identities and using these firms to generate e-way bills and obtain input tax credit (ITC) from the government.

E-way bills are those carried by a person in charge of the conveyance carrying any consignment of goods of value exceeding ₹50,000. ITC is the tax that a business has to pay on a purchase which it can use to reduce its tax liability during a sale.