The Income Tax (I-T) Department on Friday, December 20, recovered 52 kg of gold and Rs 9.86 crore in cash from an abandoned Innova car in the forests near Bhopal, the police commissioner said. This latest seizure comes in the backdrop of the ongoing raids on several construction companies across Bhopal and Indore.
During one of these ongoing raids, the authorities received a tip-off of a car leaving Bhopal with a huge amount of cash and jewellery. Acting on the tip-off, a team of 100 policemen along with the I-T Department seized a four-wheeler in the wee hours of Friday in Mendori village. Earlier in the week, the I-T department raided 51 locations of a construction company in Bhopal and Indore.
So far, Rs 2.85 crore in cash has been recovered from the house and office of former RTO constable Saurabh Sharma. According to Lokayukta DSP Ravindra Singh, 60 kg silver bars have also been recovered from Sharma’s house.
Apart from this, gold, silver and diamond jewellery worth Rs 50 lakh has also been recovered during the ongoing raids. The anti-corruption unit has also found 4 vehicles at Saurabh Sharma’s house, out of which one is a luxury car.
According to Lokayukta, documents of properties worth crores have also been recovered from Sharma’s house and office. A note found on a counting machine in his house has also stumped Lokayukta. A probe is underway.
‘US man gifted drone to Manipur ultras’
Daniel Stephen Courney, a 40-year-old controversial evangelist of US origin, emerged as a subject of public interest after a video of him distributing drones and bulletproof jackets among Kuki militants in Manipur surfaced online. The video, which has been cited as proof to accuse him of inciting violence in ethnic violence-hit Manipur, was uploaded on his YouTube channel named “Fool for Christ” in March this year.
However, it was likely shot between August 16 and September 3, 2023, as India Today’s Open-Source Intelligence (OSINT) team has established by analysing photos and videos posted by Courney and his associate MS Kumar on YouTube and Facebook. Apart from distributing relief materials to Kuki civilians, he also distributed socks, boots, two bulletproof vests, and a small drone to monitor the movement of the “enemy”, i.e., “Meitei Hindus”. Though there is nothing illegal about buying or gifting drones or bulletproof vests, such activities in an already strife-torn region by a foreign national with a claimed history in the US armed forces triggered concerns and veered too far from how religious preachers are expected to function.