india

Updated: Apr 15, 2017 01:32 IST

Police have registered cases against three state ministers, a senior Tamil Nadu government official and the driver of state health minister for allegedly threatening income tax officials and obstructing them from carrying out their duties.

An income tax official had filed a complaint against the three ministers with the Chennai police commissioner on Wednesday, following which police registered cases under Sections 183, 186 189 and 448 against food minister R Kamaraj, handlooms and textiles minister Udumalai Radhakrishnan and information and publicity minister Kadambur Raju.

Read | Income tax raids at houses of Tamil Nadu health minister, actor Sarathkumar

According to the complainant, the ministers and the official allegedly tried to put pressure on the income tax officials when they were searching the premises of state health minister C Vijayabhaskar and actor Sarathkumar on April 7.

A complaint against three serving ministers of the Tamil Nadu government comes during a controversy following raids to check the misuse of money in elections. The I-T department is also trying to check how political parties could stash a huge quantities of currency when curbs on withdrawals were in place till recently.

Read | Demonetisation impact: Govt finds Rs 10,000 crore undisclosed income, plans 60,000 tax notices

Also, the banks were supposed to flag all high-value transactions and bring them to the notice of the income tax department. Besides, some of the documents seized during the search operations indicated that money was given to people for distribution among voters in RK Nagar constituency that was originally scheduled to go for polls on Wednesday. But it was cancelled by the Election Commission following complaints of rampant misuse of money.

Bypoll in RK Nagar was necessitated following the death of former CM J Jayalalithaa. Sasikala faction of the AIADMK fielded her nephew and deputy general secretary TTV Dinakaran. Challenging him is the AIADMK (OPS) faction senior leader E Madhusudhanan, besides others.

Read more | EC cancels RK Nagar bypoll after bribery charges: Here’s all you need to know