A new modus operandi of tax evasion has been uncovered during a two-day survey conducted by the Income Tax Department's Intelligence and Criminal Investigation (I&C.I) Wing at the Hingna Sub-Registrar Office (SRO), revealing large-scale suppression of high-value property transactions. The investigation, held on July 22 and 23, exposed over Rs 800 crore worth of property deals that were not reported to the Income Tax Department as required under the Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT) framework.

 

The evasion was carried out by selectively under reporting transactions from iSarita, Maharashtra's official property registration portal, to the SFT portal of the Income Tax Department. Under the rules, all property transactions exceeding Rs 30 lakh must be reported annually through Form 61A (Part D) by May 31 by the sub-registrar to the IT Department. However, officials found that the Hingna SRO failed to report six hundreds of such transactions over the period of five years, amounting to over Rs 800 crore despite having access to automated tools designed to detect and export eligible entries. The iSarita portal captures all registered property transactions across Maharashtra. Its upgraded system allows Sub-Registrar Offices to extract a filtered list of transactions above Rs 30 lakh with a single command for submission to the Income Tax Department’s SFT portal. Despite this, officials at Hingna SRO manually selected entries for reporting, by-passing the complete automated list.

 

This manual filtering and partial disclosure formed the core of the modus operandi. Because the omitted transactions were never uploaded to the SFT portal, they remained outside the Income Tax Department’s real-time monitoring system, which uses PAN-linked data to trigger alerts for high-value financial activity. These gaps allowed property buyers and sellers to avoid scrutiny, and the omission was not detected through routine electronic surveillance. The discrepancy came to light only after the I&CI Wing physically audited the Hingna office comparing raw data from the iSarita portal with actual SFT submissions. This cross-verification revealed the deliberate withholding of transaction details. In several cases, properties were also registered at the Ready Reckoner (RAR) rates, the minimum legal benchmark for valuation, raising further suspicion of under valuation and suppressed sale consideration. Sources within the department confirmed that this was not a result of technical failure or oversight, but a deliberate strategy, possibly involving collusion.

 

The probe has now widened to include third-party data entry operators linked with the sub-registrar office. Investigations are also underway into the buyers and sellers involved in these transactions, as the absence of their records from the SFT database is in itself sufficient to trigger compliance checks. The Principal Director General of Income Tax (DGIT) of I&CI, New Delhi, has taken note of the findings, and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has initiated a review of all sub-registrar offices in the Vidarbha region, which includes all 21 sub-registrar offices in Nagpur district. Officials suspect that similar practices may be in use elsewhere, prompting expectations of further action across the state and possibly nationwide. This method of selective data extraction and intentional underreporting from iSarita to the SFT portal has now emerged as a new model of evasion, exploiting loopholes in a system designed for automatic compliance. The case is now being seen as a template for deeper scrutiny pan India in the months to come.