NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India on Tuesday sacked 15 senior tax officials facing probes in corruption cases, sending across a tough message to bureaucrats taking kickbacks for facilitating tax evasion by companies, a government statement said.

Last week, the government had dismissed 12 income tax officials who were mainly facing corruption charges.

India improved its ranking, among 180 countries, by three points to 78th on a global corruption index in 2018, according to the annual index of the Transparency International, an anti-graft watchdog.

(Reporting by Manoj Kumar and Aftab Ahmed, Editing by Sherry Jacob-Phillips)