Income Tax Department conducts raids on premises of two pastors in Punjab

Income Tax raids were carried out on premises linked to two prominent pastors from Punjab, Harpreet Deol from Khojewal village of the Kapurthala district, and Baljinder Singh from Tajpur village of the Jalandhar district.

Amritsar: The Income Tax Department on Tuesday conducted raids on the premises of two prominent pastors - Harpreet Deol from Khojewal village of the Kapurthala district and Baljinder Singh from Tajpur village of the Jalandhar district. According to sources, both pastors have their centres in Jalandhar, Amritsar, Mohali, Zirakpur and several other districts of the state. The IT Department teams from Punjab, Haryana and Jammu were conducting parallel raids at these centres and collecting records. The raids started around 6 am on all the premises belonging to the two pastors. The properties belonging to the pastors are being covered in this action.

Sources also revealed that both of them are Pentecostal pastors and were engaged in miracle healing, involving a huge number of followers mostly from the Dalit community and poor sections of society. Both of them had been using social media on a massive scale to broadcast their prayers and increase their reach within India and abroad.

The IT teams, who have been conducting the raids, reportedly had some clues about huge foreign funding, violations in the transfer of the funds and evasion of taxes. As the raids were being carried out, paramilitary forces remained on guard and sealed the buildings from all sides. Earlier in September 2022, Madhya Pradesh's Economic Offences Wing (EOW) recovered Rs 1.65 crore during the raid conducted at the residence of Bishop of Church of North India Jabalpur Diocese's PC Singh.

The EOW received the complaint against the Bishop for transferring an amount of Rs 2.70 crore to religious institutions between 2004-05 and 2011-12 and some for his purpose. Following that, the EOW raided his house and found crores of rupees in currency notes of two thousand and five hundred denominations, including foreign currency. A note-counting machine had to be ordered from the local State Bank of India to count the cash.