Held in GST evasion case, journalist Mahesh Langa now booked for ‘possession of confidential documents’

Police said the documents were recovered from Langa’s possession during his arrest in the GST fraud case. The SP, however, declined to comment on the sections under which Langa had been booked in the fresh FIR.

Meanwhile, the Gandhinagar Police, on the basis of these documents, reached the office of the GMB on Tuesday and conducted searches and inquiries to find the source that had allegedly leaked the documents to Langa.

SP Vasamsetty said, “An FIR was filed against Langa at sector-7 police station for possession of the GMB documents. Currently, he is the sole accused in the case. We are attempting to find out how he received those documents.”

Meanwhile, the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch (DCB) on Tuesday arrested five more persons in the ongoing investigation into what is being called a nationwide racket of evading GST by a network of 220 shell companies, many of them based in Gujarat.

DCP Ajit Rajian said the five men arrested on Tuesday are Adil Kadar Khokhar, Kadar alias Navdi Rafiqbhai Khokhar, Akil Anubhai Pathan, Shahrukh Rafiqbhai Rangrej, and Sarfaraz Mustufa Chauhan. All of them are residents of Bhavnagar.

With the latest arrests, the total number of persons nabbed in this case has gone up to 13.

The first people to have been arrested in the case were Langa, Aijaz alias Maldar, Abdulkader alias Bapu, and Jyotish Magan Gondaliya.

On October 13, Faizal Munaf Shaikh, Irfan alias Padu Sattar Jethwa, Jignesh Himmatlal Desai, and Paresh Pradeep Dodiya were arrested.
All of them were sent to judicial custody at Sabarmati Central Jail after their police remand ended on October 18.

Around 10 ago, Langa had moved the Gujarat High Court challenging his 10-day police remand, terming it “politically motivated”. However, on October 14, he withdrew the petition during the plea hearing.

Langa was arrested after 13 firms and their proprietors were booked for an alleged input tax credit (ITC) fraud, based on a complaint filed by the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI). The case is under investigation by the Crime Branch.

Police allege the GST fraud caused a loss 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 racket, according to the FIR.