BATHINDA, July 6 — After the traders, now flour mill owners have started smuggling wheat from Punjab to other states of the country.

In the past couple of days, the district sales tax authorities have seized hundreds of bags of wheat as these were being smuggled out of the state without the payment of sales tax, ‘dami’, market fee and rural development fund (RDF).

The district sales tax authorities have imposed a penalty of more than Rs 60,000 on the flour mill owner who tried to smuggle wheat in the name of farmers who have been exempted from paying any sales tax, market fee and (RDF).

Sources said that for the past many years, the traders had been evading sales tax, RDF and market fee to the tune of crores by exporting wheat from Punjab to other countries in the name of farmers.

The other method which was being used frequently by the traders was that they had floated bogus firms. After floating bogus business firms, they had been sending wheat out of Punjab in the name of these firms without fulfilling the tax liabilities.

Official sources said that traders had been exporting wheat from Punjab through railway and road transportation without paying any tax or duty. The sales tax authorities had also detected such cases in Muktsar and Ferozepore districts.

The district sales tax authorities had also detected that some of the traders had been sending wheat out of Punjab in the name of those business firms whose sales tax licences had been cancelled or which had ceased to function many years ago.

The sales tax authorities had been finding it difficult to check the smuggling of wheat absolutely as they had not been getting any help from the railway authorities. The railway authorities, which were only concerned about the freight revenue, allegedly did not bother to ascertain whether the necessary duties on the wheat being transported through goods trains by traders had been paid or not.