It took almost a year for the IT Department to replicate its destroyed records, following which a voluminous master list of defaulters was prepared for the state, based on the 100-odd parameters listed by the Central Board of Direct Taxes for the entire country.

Along with this was the resolve not to leave the “big fish” out of the recovery drive. On January 9, Singh himself led a raid on the properties of Altaf Bukhari, treasurer of the People’s Democratic Party, and his father Iqbal Bukhari. Thus, the Valley witnessed the high drama of a major Income Tax raid after decades. Sources said that despite political pressure, the department made out a demand of over Rs 50 crore for tax violations by FIL Industries — the company owned by the Bukharis.

The department has also been zealously following up what is described as cases related to the “Hurriat group”, many of which date back to the 1996-2002 period and are pending in appeals. It has clubbed 19 people in the “Hurriat” list and computed a demand of Rs 7.9 crore. Among the top defaulters in the list are Syed Ali Shah Geelani with an outstanding demand of Rs 3.2 crore; Maqbool Lone with an outstanding of Rs 9.7 lakh and Shafi Malik with Rs 8.2 lakh due to the department.