New Delhi: India’s tax authorities said they were unable to verify the authenticity of diary entries, allegedly made by former Karnataka chief minister B.S. Yeddyurappa, that appeared to detail huge payments to top BJP leaders as well as state legislators.
On Friday evening, a press release from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) seemed to contradict both an incriminating news report, published by The Caravan magazine, and the refutation from the BJP leader.
The CBDT said it had begun to investigate, but hit a dead-end because a government forensic laboratory needed to examine the originals of the disputed writings, and not photocopies.
Earlier on Friday, The Caravan published an explosive report, describing a diary obtained from Congress leader D.K. Shivakumar, when the Income Tax department raided his offices in 2017.
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According to the article, the documents were sent to finance minister Arun Jaitley – “but Jaitley, who is named in the entries as having allegedly received Rs 150 crore from Yeddyurappa, chose not to act on the income-tax official’s note”.
Tweeting his response, Yeddyurappa rejected the allegations as “disgusting and desperate” and said that “IT department officials have already probed the issue” and found that the documents were forged.
By evening, the CBT presented a third version of events, diverging from both accounts. “All efforts have been made by the Income Tax Office concerned to procure the originals of the disputed writings,” its press release said. “However, the details about the place and custody of the original writings and, if the original writings exist, are not available.”
The tax agency said a bunch of “loose papers”, which were a “xerox copy of a Karnataka… legislator’s diary pages” were handed over by Shivakumar during the raid in August 2017.
It said that Yeddyurappa had been questioned about the material on November 25, 2017. “He stated that he was not in the habit of writing a diary and that the loose sheets in question were not in his handwriting. He denied his handwriting and signatures on the loose sheets.”
Five months later, in April 2018, the investigation moved forward after making enquiries with the Central Forensic Science Laboratory (CFSL) in Hyderabad.
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The forensic lab replied ten days later, saying that “all disputed documents” needed to be sent in “original” in order for an examination to be carried out.
“It is clear that for a forensic analysis of the disputed writings to establish its evidentiary value, originals of the same are required,” the CBDT press release noted.
Because the originals could not be found, the income-tax department concluded that “the same loose sheets prima-facie appear to be of a doubtful nature”.
In its report, The Caravan said that it had contacted the CBDT, as well as “Yeddyurappa, Jaitley” and other BJP top-brass implicated in the documents, for their comments, but had received no response at the time their report was published.