The Income Tax Department on Wednesday raided the homes and offices of Bollywood actor Taapsee Pannu and filmmaker Anurag Kashyap as well as his partners who launched the now shuttered production house Phantom Films, officials said.
The searches, part of a tax evasion probe against Phantom Films and carried out across 30 locations in Mumbai and Pune, also covered Reliance Entertainment group CEO Shibhasish Sarkar and some executives of celebrity and talent management companies KWAN and Exceed, they said.
The raids began in the morning and are expected to be continue till late night.
Documents and computer peripherals have been recovered from various premises, officials said.
Pannu and Kashyap, both known to be outspoken in their views on a range of issues, are shooting in Pune and are understood to have been questioned by the tax sleuths as part of the preliminary questioning that takes place during raids.
The others searched include some Phantom Films production house employees, which was dissolved in 2018, and its then promoters Kashyap, director-producer Vikramaditya Motwane, producer Vikas Bahl and producer-distributor Madhu Mantena.
Tax department sources said some inter-linked transactions between the entities searched are under the scanner of the department.
The raids, they added, are aimed at gathering more evidence to further probe tax evasion allegations against them.
The business transactions of films made under the banner of Phantom Films are also being probed, the sources said.
The searches against Mantena are also being carried out in context of his links with KWAN, of which he is a co-promoter.
While Kwan’s client list includes Deepika Padukone, Exceed manages Saif Ali Khan and Sonakshi Sinha among others.
Kashyap and Pannu, who worked together in the 2018 film “Manmarziyaan”, are now collaborating in the upcoming film “Dobaara”.