Income Tax Questions Akasa Air Passenger After Cash Found at Babatpur Airport

A passenger identified as Sachin Singh of Sultanpur was questioned by the Income Tax Department at Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, Babatpur, on Wednesday, 26 August 2026, after a routine check on an Akasa Air arrival from Navi Mumbai found lakhs in cash. Airport officials informed Income Tax. An IT team questioned him in a visitor-area room. Officials have not released the exact recovered amount or a public account of its source.

The flight landed around 9:30 am. The detection was described as a routine check, not a pre-alert. After the cash was found, airport officials informed Income Tax. Questioning then ran in the visitor-area room for a prolonged spell, according to the official sequence given that evening.

Income Tax has not put a rupee figure on the cash. Briefings spoke only of lakhs. That is the hard line on this story: no crore claim, no lakh-by-lakh breakdown, no denomination list, because the department has not released one. The source of the cash was likewise not stated for the record.

After the questioning, the plan was to take Singh to Phulpur police station, the station with the airport belt on its map. That transfer was described as the next step, not as a completed production at Phulpur in the Wednesday evening account. What stood confirmed was identity, flight, landing time, the routine check, the IT interrogation in the visitor-area room, and the unquantified cash.

Babatpur’s arrivals hall sees a regular Navi Mumbai–Varanasi domestic run. Cash found on a domestic landing is an Income Tax matter once airport officials flag it; the visitor-area room is where that first questioning happens before a police station enters the file. Wednesday’s case followed that path. No official statement named a co-passenger, a declared purpose of travel, or a business linked to the cash.

Sultanpur is Singh’s recorded home district. Beyond that, Income Tax did not, in the evening briefing, add occupation, itinerary detail, or a seizure mahazar figure. The public facts therefore stay narrow: Akasa Air from Navi Mumbai, about 9:30 am at LBS International Airport, routine check, lakhs in cash, IT questioning, Phulpur as the intended next stop.

Phulpur police had not, in the same evening account, issued their own case diary extract. The police angle at that hour was the planned shift from the airport visitor area to the station, after Income Tax finished with him in the room.

Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport sits at Babatpur, north of the city, on Phulpur police station’s map. That is why the evening plan named Phulpur rather than a city-central thana.

Income Tax officials had not, by Wednesday evening, released a rupee figure for the cash found on the Akasa Air arrival or a public account of its source. After prolonged questioning in the visitor-area room, the plan was to take Sachin Singh of Sultanpur to Phulpur police station.