GST fraud: 10-day custody for senior journalist, 3 others

Apart from Langa, the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) has also got 10-day custody of three other accused who were arrested with him on Tuesday. They have been identified as Aijaz Iqbal Habib Maldar (30), Abdulkader Samad Kadri (33) and Jyotish Magan Gondaliya (42).

Deputy Commissioner of Police (DCP) Ajit Rajian said they had sought 14 days of remand but the court gave 10 days of custody. The fraud, as per officials, caused loss worth crores of rupees to the government exchequer, with the accused availing and passing on bogus ITC through fake bills. There are more than 220 benami firms set up on the basis of forged documents that were used in the alleged racket, the FIR claims.

Langa is not named in the FIR. However, his cousin Manojkumar Langa has been named as one of the proprietors of an Ahmedabad-based firm, DA Enterprise, in which Langa’s wife is a partner,  police said.

Suresh Nambath, Editor, The Hindu, on Wednesday reacted to Langa’s arrest on social media platform Bluesky. “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.” he wrote. 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”.