I-T 'surveys' at Raghav Bahl's home, office end after over 24 hrs

The Income Tax department ended its "surveys" over alleged tax evasion at the residence and office premises of Raghav Bahl, founder of news portal The Quint, after over 24 hours.

According to the officials, a team which reached the residence of Bahl -- the former head of Network18 TV -- in Noida in Uttar Pradesh on Thursday morning around 6 am left on Friday morning at around 7.30 am

However, it was yet not clear which documents and other evidence were seized by the I-T team.

A senior tax official on Thursday told IANS that surveys were also carried out at the premises of three other persons over the issue of "bogus long-term capital gains obtained from the sale of some particular companies. This issue is about Rs 100 crore worth. We are particularly looking at the tax evasion angle," the official said.

The Editors Guild has expressed concern over the government action, saying "motivated income tax searches and surveys" will undermine media freedom.

The Guild noted that Bahl had to warn the officials that if they tried to touch anything not relevant to tax issues, he "shall seek extremely strong recourse".

The tax official said the three others covered under the tax surveys were Kamal Lalwani, Anup Jain and Abhimanyu Chaturvedi.

In a note to the Editors Guild, Bahl had said The Quint was a "fully tax compliant entity" and would provide all access to all appropriate financial documents.

The Editors Guild said in a statement that while the Tax Department was "within its right to make inquiries", it should not exercise its powers in a way that could be seen as an "intimidation of the government's critics".

It said it was "perturbed" over Bahl's statement that he had to strongly advise the tax officials that they should not try and pick up or see any other mail or document which was likely to contain sensitive journalistic material.

--IANS

aks/hs