I-T raids on Cambay hotels legal, says Gujarat high court

The income tax department (investigation) has won its legal battle against former IAS officer Sanjay Gupta who is the owner of Cambay group of hotels.

The Gujarat high court has declared as legal the search and seizure operation carried out by I-T sleuths on the premises of Cambay group of hotels at several places in September last year.

"The court has declared as legal the raids that we carried out in the first week of September last year,” said a source in the I-T department.

“Soon after it was declared that the income tax department had found Rs6 crore unaccounted money, Gupta had gone to court claiming that the department didn't have a legal warrant for the raids.”

I-T officials had carried out raids on the premises of 20 hotels of the Cambay Group located at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Udaipur, Goa, Kollam, Gurgaon, Lucknow, Bangalore and Mumbai.

Sanjay Gupta is a 1985 batch IAS officer who resigned in 2002 to
pursue a career in private sector. 

It was reported at the time that he was not happy with the CM. After resigning from government service, he joined the Adani group as CEO. But, according to sources, Gupta has reportedly become close to Modi since then and is currently among the good books of the chief minister.