Ahmedabad, Jan. 10: He’s no ordinary pavement dweller, this 40-year-old Mahesh Dagli who stays all alone somewhere near Lal Darwaja.

His wife has deserted him, his father’s dead and he does not have a job any more. There’s not a soul who cares whether he’s alive or not. But that’s not what makes him extraordinary.

What does is that he has had a Rs 3-crore notice slapped on him by the income-tax people. Despite him never having seen big money, let alone play with it.

The year was early 2002. Mahesh had just quit his job with Soham Consultancy after a quarrel with his boss Kanubhai Ratilal Seth over salary dues. His father, too, had lost his job because he worked for the same person.

One depressing April day, father and son were whiling away time in their rented single room when the letter arrived. It said Mahesh owed the taxmen Rs 3 crore for business transactions carried out through his account in Central Bank.

A school dropout, Mahesh didn’t know what hit him. Immediately, he ran to the income-tax department.

An official, to whom he handed the notice, told him transactions worth crores had been carried on through his account and he was expected to pay tax on them.

Mahesh was flabbergasted. He told the tax people he had been working as a supervisor at construction sites allotted by Soham and had never even been paid salary for the five years (1997-2002) he worked for it.

While he was paid only his daily expenses and assured that his salary would be deposited in his account, his father, employed as caretaker of a bungalow on the city’s outskirts, was paid Rs 2,000 every month of the Rs 4,000 that was due to him, Mahesh said.

But his boss had asked him to open a savings account (No. 1034) in Central Bank, he told them.

How the tax people went about matters is anyone’s guess but it was discovered that Mahesh’s savings account had been converted into a current one and tenders for construction contracts in various municipalities filed through it.

The account was allegedly operated by Soham with a forged signature of Mahesh.

The Reserve Bank is believed to have detected irregularities in the account in 2001 and ordered that it be closed down. But Soham apparently managed to get around things and re-open the account.

How Mahesh managed to shake off the tax people or what follow-up action was taken against Soham is not known. The firm could not be contacted for a reaction.

A year after the incident, Mahesh lost his father and along with it the rented room they used to live in. His landlord, Katalikbhai, called him a “shady person” and refused to let him stay on.