I-T dept searches premises of media baron Raghav Bahl

Raghav Bahl. Pic/Twitter

The Income Tax Department searched media baron Raghav Bahl's home and office on Thursday in connection with a case of alleged tax evasion, officials said. A team of I-T sleuths raided Bahl's premises in Noida early morning and are looking for documents and other evidence related to a case of "bogus long term capital gains (LTCG) received by various beneficiaries", they said.

Bahl, who was in Mumbai, said in a statement that he was on his way to Delhi and his wife and mother were confined to the residence and not allowed to speak to anybody. "I have got little else to go on right now," he said in a statement to the media.

Apart from Bahl, three other "beneficiaries" and professionals, J Lalwani, Anoop Jain and Abhimanyu, are also being searched as part of the same action, officials said. Officials said their business links to offshore entities are being investigated.

Editors' Guild says
The Editors Guild of India expressed concern saying it believed that "motivated" I-T raids would seriously undermine media freedom and the government should desist from such attempts.

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates

This story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed, agencies. Mid-day accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability, trustworthiness, reliability and data of the text. Mid-day management/mid-day.com reserves the sole right to alter, delete or remove (without notice) the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever