Income tax officials may come down hard on benami bank accounts to check if they were misused to deposit and hoard illegal cash reserves, a report by Hindustan Times said.
Benami or shell bank accounts are those accounts that are used by someone different than whose name they are registered in.
According to the report, the income tax department has already started cracking down on “suspicious bank lockers” to check if they were used to hoard black money. The I-T crackdowns came after the Narendra Modi-led government delegalised the use of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes.
A government official was quoted in the report saying that the checks were only going to be carried out to trace black money transactions. However, the bank accounts would not be sealed.
The report said that most of the accounts here were in cooperative banks and in rural areas. The income tax department has already sent 6,000 notices to holders of accounts that witnessed suspicious transaction activities.
Source: dnaindia.com