The Income-Tax Department has during its search operations in the first quarter this fiscal seized assets worth ₹103 crore.

The total undisclosed income admitted by the 102 groups of persons, who were searched during this period, stood at ₹2,670 crore, official sources said.

The government banned old ₹500 and ₹1,000 rupee notes on November 8 last year, to eliminate corruption, black money, counterfeit money and terror funding.

The I-T Department had between November 8 (when demonetisation announcement was made) and March 2017 searched 900 groups of persons leading to seizure of ₹900 crore. These persons had admitted to undisclosed income of ₹7,961 crore.

New currency notes

On the issue of withdrawal of new currency notes from banks post demonetisation, the Income-Tax Department had detected several ways of manipulation including through employing persons to exchange old denomination notes, use of duplicate KYC documents and shadow entities for conversion of unaccounted cash held in Specified Bank Notes into legal tender.

The government had also concluded that cooperative banks, credit societies and other banks were at fault and involved in helping people for conversion of unaccounted cash.

Between November 9, 2016 and January 10 this year, the I-T Department had seized valuables of more than ₹610 crore including cash of ₹513 crore.

Seizure of cash in new currency notes was about ₹110 crore. The undisclosed income detected from these actions was more than ₹5,400 crore, official sources said.

In the post demonetisation period, the number of money-laundering cases registered stood at 33 and investigations in these cases resulted in attachment of property worth ₹129.82 crore.

Gold weighing 7.53 kg was also seized and 18 persons were arrested under the provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act, 2002.

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