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Rs 100 crore worth diamonds seized from UP engineer's house

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A startling haul of diamonds estimated to be worth Rs 100 crore, two kg of gold and Rs 10 crore cash from the residence of tainted Noida chief engineer Yadav Singh on Friday has come as a huge embarrassment for the Akhilesh Yadav government.

On Thursday, too, the income tax department had simultaneously raided about two dozen locations related to Singh in NCR. The IT sleuths have unveiled a web of shell companies floated by the engineer in fake names, a number of bank lockers yet to be opened, and details of numerous 'benami' properties.

The DG (Investigation), Income Tax, Krishna Saini confirmed the raids to reporters here on Friday. The IT officials recovered Rs 10 crore in cash, stashed in eight bags in a car outside Singh's house on Friday morning, while Rs 1 lakh was recovered from another car, an Audi which itself is worth over Rs 90 lakh. They also recovered diamonds from the engineer's bedroom worth over Rs 100 crore, he said.

"During the raid by 12 teams, our sleuths have detected 40 fake companies and 13 bank lockers," Saini said. "The bank lockers are being checked and details would be available soon," he added.

IT officials are reported to have started interrogating Singh about his murky aggrandisement. But, till late evening there was no news of Yadav Singh's expected suspension by the state government.

The raid is still underway and in most cases, the fake companies were registered under Singh's wife Pushpalata's name. Singh had floated a bogus company in Kolkata and later purchased plots in Noida and Greater Noida, besides selling the shares of these companies illegally.

The engineer who occupied the same post and wielded unbridled authority in Noida even during the previous Mayawati regime, had been declared an "absconder" by the UP Police after he was suspended and an FIR filed against him in a Rs 954-crore properties scam soon after the Samajwadi Party government took over in March 2012.

But, surprisingly, the Akhilesh government reinstated him in November 2013 and recently gave him additional charge as Chief Engineer of Greater NOIDA as well as of the Yamuna Expressway Authority. Questions raised in the media about how such a tainted engineer facing serious corruption charges in a multi-crore scam could be given such pride of place, remain unanswered.

Interestingly, Yadav Singh is neither a Yadav nor a Singh (Thakur) but belongs to a Scheduled Caste (SC).

The latest Income Tax raids promise to cause much more embarrassment to the Akhilesh government compared to the financial and other losses that Yadav Singh could suffer.

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