As many as 27 premises, comprising both offices and homes, were raided by the Income Tax Department here on Tuesday. The crackdown mainly concerned six real-estate players in the city. At least two of of the developers raided are alleged to be close to Karnataka Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy, while a third was recently in the news for being robbed by a gang of well-educated youths. Among the two with ties to the Karnataka Chief Minister is Gottigere Manjunath or S Manjunath, a real estate developer from south Bangalore who rode the recent real estate boom in the city and struck rich. When asked about the raid on his “associate”, the Chief Minister dismissed the episode by saying that the IT Department routinely conducted raids on hundreds of people. He also said Manjunath was only a party worker in the Janata Dal (Secular) and was not his associate. The other person known to be close to Kumaraswamy who was raided as well is Prasad Babu or Kabaddi Babu who has in the past been shown as director of a company owned by the Chief Minister's family. Other developers raided included Reddy Veeranna of the real-estate development firm Manyata Promoters. He was recently awarded a 22-hectare IT SEZ project by the Government. Also raided were real-estate promoter Kupendra Reddy and a firm called R S Developers. Incidentally, R S Developers was in the news recently following an armed robbery of nearly Rs 1.2 crore in cash that was being transported from a bank to the company office on March 31. A gang of seven youths, including an MBA student, a techie and postgraduates from Kerala, Bangalore and Coorg, were arrested earlier this month for the daylight heist. During investigation the Bangalore police claimed the youths had targeted real-estate developers known to be hoarding black money. Income tax officials associated with the raids on Tuesday, however, said R S Developers was not raided on the basis of its link with the armed robbery but on independent information. Among others raided on Tuesday were Reliable Developers and several real estate consultants. The IT Department began the search on Tuesday morning after deploying nearly 140 people for the job— labeled as one of the biggest in Bangalore, sources said. In an official note issued on Tuesday, the director general of income tax investigation wing, said more than Rs 1 crore in cash was seized in the raids along with incriminating documents of property transactions and investments “which by a preliminary estimate runs into several crores of rupees”.
