Latur & Nanded cops bust racket duping sugar mills

Aurangabad: The Nanded and Latur police have arrested one person, who along with his accomplices, allegedly made an offer to two sugar mills to sell sugar in the international market and help them get the benefit of lower goods and services tax (GST).

The sugar mills realised that they had been duped after the suspects allegedly failed to hand over the receipts and documents related to the exports. They had allegedly sold the sugar in the domestic market.

One case of cheating each has been registered in Nanded and Latur districts by the sugar mills. They claimed to have suffered losses to the tune of crores of rupess due to the suspects

Nanded police have arrested Abhijit Deshmukh, who is from Ahmednagar district. He was later handed over to the Latur police. After being produced before the Latur court on Thursday, he has been remanded in police custody for five days. Deshmukh along with three others have been named as suspects in the cases.

Authorities said that sugar factories get to pay GST at subsidised rates if they export surplus sugar produced in their factories. If they fail to export the sugar, they have to pay the full GST.

Nanded superintendent of police Pramodkumar Shewale told TOI, “As per the government norms, the sugar factory has to pay 0.1% GST if the export targets are met. Failing to export the surplus sugar, the factory has to pay 4.99% GST.”

The officer said that suspects contacted a cooperative sugar factory and assured them of selling their export quota sugar in the international market. “An agreement was also signed between the two firms. Accordingly, 5,682 metric tonnes of sugar was handed over to the firm run by the suspects,” said Shewale.

Latur superintendent of police Nikhil Pingale said that the suspects also contacted a cooperative sugar firm in June 2020 and purchased 8,364 metric tonnes of export quota sugar on the pretext of selling it in international market.

“Prima facie it appears to be an organized racket. They purchased sugar from the export quota and sold it in the domestic market,” said Pingale.

The officer said that in both the cases, at the time of purchase, suspects signed an agreement of selling the sugar in international market and submitting the documents to the sugar factory so that it could avail GST subsidy.

After the firm failed to submit the documents, the sugar factory from Latur allegedly incurred losses of Rs 8.74 crore as it had to pay the full GST. Similarly, the sugar mill from Nanded had to pay full GST running into several crores.