The GST (Goods and Service Taxes) department has arrested top executives of Vadodara-based Manpasand Beverages Ltd in a Rs 40 crore tax evasion and fraud case.

As per a CGST Vadodara-II statement, the beverage company's Managing Director (MD), Abhishek Singh, his brother Harshvardhan Singh and the Chief Financial Officer (CFO), Paresh Thakkar, have been arrested after a thorough investigation and multi-locational raids.

"Multi-locational searches were conducted on various premises of Manpasand Beverages on May 23. The searches resulted into an unveiling of a huge racket of creating fake units for availing fraudulent credit and committing tax evasion of Rs 40 crore and involving turnover of Rs 300 crore approximately," it said.

The CGST statement further said that it unearthed a network of more than 30 fake units in various parts of the country, during its investigation, that were used to commit fraud by availing illegal credit. The investigation regarding the ultimate beneficiary of the fraud and the shell companies is under progress.

Earlier, in May 2018, the listed company's statutory auditor Deloitte Haskins & Sells had resigned from its position ahead of the financial meeting for declaring the financial results, stating that Manpasand Beverages had failed to provide them with "significant information" on the financial results for 2017-18.