Ahmedabad: A magisterial court here rejected the application for regular bail filed by Mahesh Langa, a senior journalist with a national English daily, in connection with allegations of wrongly availing input tax credit (ITC) by generating fake bills through fake firms in the alleged multi-crore central goods & services tax (CGST) fraud.
Langa was arrested along with others earlier this month and was sent for a 10-day custodial interrogation. He applied for regular bail on Oct 19. While Langa claimed innocence, the prosecution vehemently opposed the bail plea.
After hearing the arguments, additional chief judicial magistrate M V Chauhan rejected Langa's bail plea and stated in his order, "After perusing the case papers, the probe reveals that the accused seems to have played an active role in this offence. The investigation is underway and there is a possibility of evidence being tampered with."
The court said that the alleged offence has been registered under Sections 420, 467, 468, 471, 474 and 120B of the IPC, and there is a provision of imprisonment up to 10 ye5ars or life imprisonment. "Perusal of the case papers reveals that Langa, in connivance with co-accused, hatched a criminal conspiracy to evade income tax and GST; entered into a financial transaction of Rs 43,35,949 with Dhruvi Enterprise to obtain bogus ITC and caused the loss of crores of rupees to the nation. He appears to have committed the serious crime," the court noted in its order.
The court also stated that for his own financial gain, to avoid taxes, and to cause loss to the govt, Langa made his wife a partner in a firm named D A Enterprise, but managed it by himself in connivance with the co-accused. The court further stated, "Despite being a reputed journalist, for his financial gain, the accused evaded taxes by making fake bills in the name of Dhruvi Enterprise and by entering into financial transactions with it. An amount of Rs 20 lakh was discovered from his house which was seized."
Meanwhile, a city sessions court on Monday denied bail to four co-accused arrested in this case. They are Brirajsinh Sarvaiya, Ranmal Dasa, Jignesh Desai and Pradeep Dodiya.
In another development, the city crime branch arrested three more persons — Sanay Rudhani from Junagadh, Dilip Tank from Porbandar and Sudhir Raiyani from Rajkot district — in connection with this case. They were produced before a magisterial court, which sent them to seven-day custodial interrogation. With three more people being apprehended, the total number of arrests in this case is 16.