This story is based on a 254-page confidential dossier prepared by the Income Tax Department into a system of alleged kickbacks in tenders for various schemes of the Uttar Pradesh government. According to the report, investigators documented cash transfers, WhatsApp exchanges about expensive gifts, property trails through a suspected shell firm, and a Rs 21 crore investment made in a company earlier run by former top bureaucrat Navneet Sehgal’s son. The I-T officer who received approval to refer this matter to the UP government had subsequently led Operation Panther against gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari, a case that made national headlines. This one did not. No action is publicly known, and Sehgal moved on to a prime post-retirement appointment in the Modi government. 

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On March 4, 2022, income tax officials stopped a Toyota vehicle on a Lucknow road. Inside were three men and Rs 41 lakh in cash.

What looked like an ordinary interception exposed a deeper trail – an entrenched system of kickbacks in government tenders and grants in Uttar Pradesh. A confidential report by the Directorate of Income Tax Investigation (UP and Uttarakhand) later detailed how at least Rs 112 crore of public money was allegedly siphoned through a web of bureaucrats, contractors, and shell companies.

According to the report, the biggest share of kickbacks allegedly went to Navneet Kumar Sehgal, a 1988-batch IAS officer who held several powerful posts during the period under investigation. More than a year after the income tax investigation, he was granted a significant central posting as Prasar Bharati chief in Delhi. A job he recently quit mid-tenure.