Bengaluru, April 27: The Income Tax department has seized Rs 4 crore unaccounted cash and 6.5 kg gold jewellery from three state contractors in Bengaluru, Mysuru and Davangere in poll-bound Karnataka, said an official on Friday.

"The unaccounted cash and gold jewellery were found during simultaneous raids on the contractors on Thursday and were seized subsequently," said Joint Income Tax Joint Commissioner G. Ramesh in a statement here.

Of the Rs 4 crore cash, Rs 1.2 crore was found in a moving car after a hot pursuit by the sleuths of the department's investigation wing.

"Besides cash and jewellery, we got evidence of inflated purchases, payments to fake sub-contractors, fraudulent labour payments and unaccounted cash payments," Ramesh said.

The department is on the lookout for hoarded cash in Karnataka and across the country which had recently resulted in the shortage of currency notes in some states.

During raids on April 24-26, the department seized Rs 6.76 crore of unaccounted cash from four government contractors in Mysuru.

Since the May 12 state assembly elections were announced on March 27, the tax department has seized Rs 10.62 crore unaccounted cash and gold jewellery valued at Rs 1.33 crore.

Intelligence collected by the investigation wing also indicated that several contractors across the state were possessing huge stocks of cash in Rs 2,000 and Rs 500 notes.

Earlier, the tax sleuths seized Rs 4.13 crore in cash and 4.52 kg gold jewellery valued at Rs 1.32 crore during raids conducted across the state over the last three weeks.

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ISLAMABAD: At least two more cases of poliovirus were reported in Pakistan, taking the number of infections to 52 so far this year, a report said on Friday.

“The Regional Reference Laboratory for Polio Eradication at the National Institute of Health has confirmed the detection of two more wild poliovirus type 1 (WPV1) cases in Pakistan," an official statement said.

The fresh infections — a boy and a girl — were reported from the Dera Ismail Khan district of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province.

“Genetic sequencing of the samples collected from the children is underway," the statement read. Dera Ismail Khan, one of the seven polio-endemic districts of southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, has reported five polio cases so far this year.

Of the 52 cases in the country this year, 24 are from Balochistan, 13 from Sindh, 13 from Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, and one each from Punjab and Islamabad.

There is no cure for polio. Only multiple doses of the oral polio vaccine and completion of the routine vaccination schedule for all children under the age of five can keep them protected.