Tax evasion in Mumbai may now become more difficult as taxpayers will have to deal with a cyber-savvy income-tax department. The IT department has recently adopted a technology to track down fraudulent electronic transactions even after they are deleted from computers. The department has a Cyber Forensic Lab in Mumbai that consists of advanced technological equipment to trace income that has escaped the tax net and will also trace other fraudulent transactions designed to defraud tax regimes. The Cyber Forensic Lab facilitates investigations related to electronic transactions and analysis of business data concealed in computers. The lab can trace specified material from a sea of stored data. It also contains a facility to copy data without attracting the provisions of the Information Technology Act. The lab can also trace origin of emails, their locations, city and country and the person or persons behind the mail. The system also has the capability to track down all network communications originating from particular sources. The Directorate of Income-tax Investigation, Mumbai, has already installed the facility at their office at Scindia House in Ballard Estate. The Directorate of Revenue Intelligence in Mumbai, another investigating agency of the government of India, specialising in economic offences, too, has installed a similar facility. The lab will be a handy tool for tax sleuths during income-tax raids as it can quickly analyse the data stored in the party’s computers at high speed. The essential features of the lab includes a TrueBack which is a digital evidence seizure and acquisition tool, CyberCheck that functions as a digital evidence recovery and analysis tool, EmailTracer, a tool for tracing emails, NeSa, a network sessions analyser for analysing captured packets including VoIP, SiMan which is a sim card analyser, ToolImager used for hardware tool acquisitions of digital evidence, etc. The lab was formally inaugurated by Sunita Kaila, member investigation at Central Board of Direct Taxes, last week. – www.economictimes.indiatimes.com
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