The Income Tax department on Thursday raided an Axis bank branch in Noida sector 51 and reportedly found out accounts belonging to 20 fake companies. (Reuters)

The Income Tax department on Thursday raided an Axis bank branch in Noida sector 51 and reportedly found out accounts belonging to 20 fake companies. According to a report, over Rs 60 crore was deposited in those accounts. This came days after raid was conducted at an Axis Bank branch in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk. According to reports, I-T officials had said that about Rs 100 crore in old notes had been deposited in the accounts since November 8, the date of the announcement of demonetisation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an objective to curb down the flow of black money in the country.

The officials told NDTV that these 44 fake accounts had been created by the usage of forged documents. they said that the investigators suspected that the money might have been routed to buy gold. This is the second such raid to have been reported at a branch of Axis Bank. Earlier last month, I-T officials had nabbed two people with Rs 3.5 crores of cash in new currency notes while they tried to come out of the Kashmere Gate branch in Central Delhi.

Following the announcement of demonetisation scheme by the Prime Minister on November 8, the RBI had put certain strict restrictions regarding the deposition of the now defunct Rs 500 and Rs 1000 notes in bank accounts until December 30. The government had said that any deposit that amounted more than Rs 2.5 lakh would come under the scrutiny of the Income Tax department. The centre had also given the people with the outlawed and untaxed notes one last opportunity and asked them to deposit the amount in their accounts and pay half the taxes and penalty.