A court in Ahmedabad has sent The Hindu journalist Mahesh Langa, and the other accused in an alleged GST evasion case, to 10-day police custody.
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.
He was arrested on Monday by the Ahmedabad Crime Branch after an FIR was lodged against several individuals and entities, including a firm allegedly owned by the journalist’s cousin Manoj Kumar. It has been alleged that the company is among a network of 200 entities which tried to evade tax duties through fraudulent transactions.
According to a report in The Hindu, Langa’s counsel Vedanta Rajguru said that the journalist is neither a director nor promoter of the company, DA Enterprise, which has been named in the FIR.
In the remand application, police said that he was running DA Enterprise in the names of his relative and wife. But Rajguru reportedly argued that the police case hinged on a statement made by Manoj Langa that he carried out the transactions on the instructions of Mahesh Langa. “There is no transaction, signature in Mahesh’s name,” Rajguru said, according to The Hindu.
When police claimed that Mahesh Langa was unable to explain the presence of the Rs 20 lakh recovered from his home, Rajguru said the money was kept for financial exigencies and denied that it was linked with the alleged scam.
Meanwhile, in a post on X, The Hindu editor 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”.
Update at 6.30 pm on Oct 10: In a statement on Thursday evening, the Press Club of India, the Indian Women’s Press Corps, the Delhi Union of Journalists and the Press Association expressed concern at Langa’s custodial interrogation.
Press bodies — @PCITweets, @iwpcdelhi, DUJ and Press Association, express concern at arrest of Mahesh Langa (@LangaMahesh), a journalist with The Hindu in #Gujarat
— Press Club of India (@PCITweets) October 10, 2024
“… We feel that the custodial interrogation of Mr Langa is a procedural overreach … to harass him.” pic.twitter.com/T3IUGHNMrF
“We feel that the custodial interrogation of Mr Langa is a procedural overreach…to harass him,” read the statement.
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