In a shocking allegation, a senior Income Tax officer claimed that Pramod Chandra Mody, the chairperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes, had repeatedly asked her to drop proceedings in a “sensitive case”.
In her nine-page complaint to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Alka Tyagi, former Chief Commissioner of Income Tax in Mumbai, also alleged that Mody had told her that he had secured his position as CBDT chairperson after taking action against an opposition leader, reported the Indian Express on Saturday.
Mody allegedly gave instructions to the officer that “there should be no record maintained of the fact that he was in any manner, involved in this sensitive case (which Mody asked to close) even for consultations and that it should be ensured that nothing in this file should ever show his linkage, in any manner to this case.”
According to the report, Tyagi sent the complaint to the finance minister on June 21, less than a month after the new government was sworn in. She said she had been under “tremendous pressure” from Mody.
The 1984 batch IRS officer also said that she had never dreamt of revealing such details, but the “manipulative and unscrupulous” nature of the functioning of the CBDT chairman forced her to do so.
Tyagi’s office had handled several high-profile cases including Deepak Kochhar-ICICI Bank case and Jet Airways tax evasion case.
