With the arrest of eight members, the Uttar Pradesh Special Task Force (STF) has busted a major organised inter-state GST evasion gang that allegedly caused a revenue loss of over ₹500 crore through fake firms, forged invoices and bogus e-way bills, officials said in a statement issued on Friday.
Officials said the racket was spread across several states, including Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Bihar and Assam. In Uttar Pradesh, fake firms were registered in Meerut, Hapur, Ghaziabad, Noida, Kanpur, Lucknow, Varanasi and Agra. In Agra alone, a firm called Sharma Enterprises is accused of causing a GST loss of ₹137 crore, they added.
STF investigations revealed that the gang created shell companies using forged documents and generated fraudulent sales invoices and e-way bills without any actual movement of goods or services. The accused allegedly had access to login IDs, passwords and OTPs of multiple firms’ bank accounts, enabling them to manipulate transactions. These fake documents were uploaded on the GST portal to illegally pass on input tax credit (ITC) benefits to genuine firms.
Initial scrutiny of bank transactions and digital evidence suggests GST evasion exceeding ₹500 crore. The arrested accused will be produced before the concerned court, while further legal proceedings are underway, officials said.
According to the official statement, the arrests were made during questioning at the STF field unit office in Meerut on Friday. The accused were allegedly involved in registering shell companies across multiple states and selling fake ITC to legitimate firms.
The accused arrested have been identified as Ramesh Patel of Deoria, currently residing in Delhi; Ankur Tiwari of Gautam Buddh Nagar; Swatantra Kumar Tiwari of Ghaziabad; and five Meerut residents — Mohammad Wasim, Mohammad Sohail, Javed Malik, Ikramuddin and Dilshad Malik.
The STF recovered a large cache of incriminating material, including 90 forged rubber stamps of fake firms, 54 cheque books of different banks, 54 debit and credit cards, seven PAN cards, seven Aadhaar cards and four voter ID cards, five fake transport company bill books, three laptops, 18 mobile phones, 25 files related to bogus billing and four four-wheelers.
Officials said the syndicate operated accounting offices in Meerut and Ghaziabad, from where GST filings, fake invoicing and bank transactions were managed. Owners of genuine firms allegedly shared GST credentials via WhatsApp, after which the accused generated bogus invoices and e-way bills. Circular trading and cash transactions were used to create a façade of legitimate business activity. The crackdown followed a request for technical assistance linked to a case registered at Lohamandi police station in Agra in August 2024.
