Mahesh Langa, a senior assistant editor at The Hindu, was arrested by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch on Tuesday in an alleged GST scam.
Seen as an independent voice, Langa has been reporting on Gujarat for the last two decades and has reported on politics and public issues such as unemployment.
An FIR was lodged on Monday under IPC sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 474, and 120-B against 13 individuals and entities, including DA Enterprises – a firm allegedly owned by the journalist’s brother Langa Manojkumar Rambhai. It has been alleged that the company is among a network of 200 entities which tried to evade tax duties through fraudulent transactions.
The case and ‘conspiracy’
The case was filed on the basis of data mining inputs received through Himanshu Joshi, a senior intelligence officer in the office of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence in Ahmedabad.
Following the FIR, raids and investigations were carried out by teams from the crime branch, SOG, and EOW, at 14 locations across Gujarat, including Ahmedabad and Surat.
The FIR claims that a shell firm called Dhruvi Enterprise had obtained GST registration through a forged rent agreement, and appeared to be indulging in bogus input tax credit transfers through fake invoices without the actual supply of any goods or services.
Input tax credit refers to the GST paid by a registered entity which can help offset the GST liability on the goods or services the person registered under the company supplies.
Multiple firms across India were allegedly using the same PAN used for the registration of Dhruvi Enterprise, and the accumulated input tax credit was then passed on to 12 “active firms”, the probe suggested.
A network of nearly 200 bogus firms are “working across the country in an organized manner to defraud the government exchequer by availing and passing of bogus input tax credit”.
Police claims about Langa
DCP (crime) Ajit Rajian told Newslaundry that documents with the name of Langa’s wife Kavita were also found, but she has not been named in the FIR as the probe has verified that she had nothing to do with the entity’s operations. Rajian alleged that it was the journalist who was using the firm for fraudulent activities and is still being questioned in the case.
Langa’s brother has not been arrested either.
The police further claimed that there was a “large group working towards a criminal conspiracy for causing financial loss to the nation to the tune of revenue which may run into crores, by the way of using such fake billing, forged documents, and malafide misrepresentation of facts/documents”.
In his complaint to an assistant commissioner of police, Himanshu Joshi claimed that data mining had suggested that Dhruvi Enterprise was indulging in receipt and transfer of bogus input tax credits of GST. Besides DA Enterprises, the firm allegedly linked to Mahesh Langa’s brother, some of the other entities named in the FIR were Raj Infra, Haresh Construction Company, and Om Construction.
Newslaundry reached out to Suresh Nambath, editor of The Hindu, for comment. This report will be updated if a response is received.
Langa’s family could not be reached for comment.
Update at 1.50 pm on Oct 9: In a post on X, Suresh Nambath said, “We would like to state at this time that we appreciate his professional work for The Hindu as the Gujarat correspondent based in Ahmedabad. We do hope that no journalist anywhere is targeted for their work, and we expect the investigation to be conducted fairly and quickly.”
Nambath also said that “while we have no details about the merits of the case, we are given to understand that this is not related to his reports published in The Hindu”.
We would like to state at this time that we appreciate his professional work for The Hindu as the Gujarat correspondent based in Ahmedabad. We do hope that no journalist anywhere is targeted for their work, and we expect the investigation to be conducted fairly and quickly.
— Suresh Nambath (@nambath) October 9, 2024
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