Patna: A report sent by former Kaimur SP Shivdeep Lande to the Bihar Police headquarters last month says an organized crime syndicate is operating on NH2 (Grand Trunk Road between Kolkata and Delhi) in Bihar and Jharkhand in collusion with a section of transport, commercial taxes and police authorities and duping the Centre and the state governments of thousands of crores every year.

Sources said the extent of the revenue loss in Bihar alone can be gauged from how transport, mining and commercial taxes officials realized Rs 71.44 lakh as penalty from 500-odd trucks caught on September 27 by police at Karmnasa (Kaimur), one of the four integrated check posts installed by the state government.

Records maintained by the Karmnasa checkpost reveal that about 1.1 lakh trucks crossed the border to enter UP in November. If such checks had been conducted every day, Bihar could have realized at least Rs 158 crore in one month. This means the state is losing around Rs 1,800 crore every year in revenue related to commercial taxes and transport, the sources said, quoting the report.

The probe into the coal racket began when Lande was the SP of Rohtas district and 65 “subsidized” coal-laden trucks were caught at a depot off NH-2 in Dehri in May last and coal-related documents seized from them.

Such a scam has been an open secret for long. It is, however, probably for the first time that an SP has reported this to the Bihar Police HQ and also attached hundreds of pages of probe reports to highlight the gravity of the loot.

Source: TimesOfIndia