WATCH: In 'highest-ever' haul, Rs 351 crore cash seized from Odisha business group linked to Congress MP

Rs 351 crore, an amount that many can't even dream of, was seized in the income tax department raids on an Odisha-based distillery company, owned by Congress Rajya Sabha MP Dhiraj Prasad Sahu's family. It took the officials five days to count the "highest-ever" haul carried out by any probe agency in the country in a single action.Cupboards and lockers stashed with currency notes bundled together were what the IT officials witnessed over the last week as it carried out searches. More than three dozen counting machines and 80 officials were deployed to sum up the amount recovered during the raid.[video width="848" height="480" mp4="https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/WhatsApp-Video-2023-12-11-at-8.55.45-AM.mp4"][/video]The premises of Dhiraj Prasad Sahu, the Congress MP from Jharkhand, in Ranchi and other places, were also covered during the searches by the IT department.The marathon raids against Boudh Distillery Private Limited were launched on 6 December by the taxman on charges of tax evasion and "off-the-book" transactions.[caption id="attachment_13488652" align="alignnone" width="300"] Source: News18[/caption]A report by PTI quoted sources saying Rs 351 crore cash has been counted till Sunday and the process has ended.As many as nine teams of about 80 people from the tax department and various banks worked in shifts in a 24x7 cycle to finish counting the cash recovered during the raid.[video width="832" height="544" mp4="https://images.firstpost.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/WhatsApp-Video-2023-12-11-at-8.55.55-AM.mp4"][/video]Another team of 200 officials, including security personnel, drivers and other staff, joined in after the taxman found 10 almirahs stuffed with cash apart from some other locations.As many as 200 bags and trunks were used to transport the cash for depositing it in various bank branches in Odisha, PTI reported sources as saying.[caption id="attachment_13488702" align="alignnone" width="300"] Source: News18[/caption]The maximum cache of currency, largely in Rs 500 denomination, was recovered from the premises of the company in Bolangir district, the sources said.The department believes that the entire cache of currency is "unaccounted" money earned from cash sales of country liquor by the business group, distributors and others.[caption id="attachment_13488692" align="alignnone" width="300"] Source: News18[/caption]The IT department is also recording the statements of the executives and other staff who were present at the searched locations and will soon issue summonses to the main promoters of the company for recording their statements. It was not clear what amount of cash and other documents were seized from Sahu's house.On Friday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi assured the people that the money looted from the public will be returned and had posted a Hindi newspaper report where the cash recovered by the IT department was shown stacked."The countrymen should look at the pile of these notes and then listen to the honest speeches' of their leaders ...Whatever has been looted from the public, every penny will have to be returned, this is Modi's guarantee," the Prime Minister said in a post on X.Some of the high-value seizures in the past include one from 2019 when the GST Intelligence raided a Kanpur-based businessman and seized cash amounting to Rs 257 crore and another instance where cash amounting to Rs 163 crore was unearthed by the I-T department during searches against a road construction firm in Tamil Nadu in July 2018.With inputs from PTI