‘The Hindu’ journalist Mahesh Langa denied bail in GST scam case

A Gujarat court has rejected the bail plea of journalist Mahesh Langa in a case concerning an alleged Goods and Services Tax fraud, reported Bar and Bench on Wednesday.

While denying bail to Langa on Friday, Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Manish V Chauhan said that the journalist had prima facie conspired with others to evade income tax and Goods and Services Tax.

Langa works for The Hindu in Ahmedabad.

The court said that, according to an investigation, Langa was directly involved in transactions worth Rs 44 crore through a company called Dhruvi Enterprises.

The transactions seemed to have been carried out to facilitate bogus input tax credits, resulting in loss of crores of rupees to the public exchequer, the court claimed.

“After reading the case papers and the objections presented, the accused Maheshdan Prabhudan Langa along with the co-accused formed a criminal conspiracy against the Income Tax and GST with a firm named Dhruvi Enterprises as the manager of Paschan Saru Dhruvi Enterprises,” the court said in its order.

“On perusal of the case papers it is found during the investigation that the applicant/accused in this case has played an active role in the crime,” the court added. “The investigation is ongoing. There is a possibility of tampering with evidence.”

The police have alleged that Dhruvi Enterprises created six...

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