 "Mukhtar Ansari")
The income tax department on Thursday issued a proclamation for impounding a Rs 12-crore land piece, alleged to be a benami asset of gangster-politician Mukhtar Ansari, in this district, official sources said.
A team of officials from the department's Lucknow investigation unit accompanied by district authorities and local police erected an iron-made notice board at 'Mauja Kapurpur NZA' under Sadar Tehsil in the district, the sources told PTI.
The I-T department is impounding this property temporarily under the benami assets law and any sale/purchase or transfer of this asset is prohibited, the board embossed with the department's logo and message said.
A senior official also read out the proclamation to the public present around.
As per the process, once the Adjudicating Authority of the Benami assets law approves the I-T department order, the property can be confiscated permanently.
The department's Lucknow headquartered benami assets investigation unit attached this property last month even as it has identified about two dozen such assets worth Rs 127 crore as part of its probe against Ansari and his associates.
The latest land parcel is worth about Rs 1.29 crore (book value), as per the sources. The market value of this property is about 12 crore, according to an attachment order of the department.
The benamidar (in whose name a benami property is standing) in this case has been identified as an alleged associate and neighbour of Ansari, Ganesh D Mishra while the "beneficial owner" has been named as Ansari in the attachment order.
Benami means 'without name' and such properties are those in which the real beneficiary is not the one in whose name the property has been purchased.
The attachment order last month was issued under the provisions of the Benami Transactions (Prohibition) Amendment Act of 2016.
The department, the sources said, followed the "documents and money trail" in this case after going through multiple FIRs filed by the Uttar Pradesh Police against Ansari, checking land records and numerous bank documents and it was found that Mishra had allegedly furnished a personal bond of Rs 90 lakh and had also pledged his property for a Rs 1.60 crore loan taken by a company in which Ansari's wife and son are shareholders.
The investigation found that the land was a "benami property purchased in the name of Ganesh Dutt Mishra" and the cheques of Rs 1.29 crore mentioned in the sale deed were "never" presented for payment.
The attachment is part of a "comprehensive" action undertaken by the I-T department against Ansari and his associates under an operation codenamed 'Panther'.
The department, as per the sources, may also attach the rest 22 benami properties of Ansari which are estimated to be bearing a market value of over Rs 100 crore.
Ansari, a five-time former MLA, is lodged in a jail at Banda in UP.
A local court in Ghazipur last month sentenced Ansari and his brother Afzal Ansari to imprisonment for 10 years and four years, respectively in a 2007 Gangsters Act case. Afzal Ansari, a BSP MP, was subsequently disqualified as a member of the Lok Sabha.
Apart from the I-T department, he is being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate too on money laundering charges.
Ansari faces as many as 49 criminal cases that have been booked against him and aides on charges of land grabbing, murder and extortion.
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