Accused sent to 10-day police remand in GST evasion case

FIR states that the alleged fraud was committed between February 1 and May 1, 2023

A day after the Ahmedabad Crime Branch arrested five persons involved in an alleged GST scam by floating bogus firms and availing input tax credit, a court on Wednesday (October 9, 2024) sent the accused persons to police custody for 10 days.

In a remand application, the police stated that custodial interrogation was required to unearth the conspiracy to create losses to the government.

One of the suspects arrested in the case is The Hindu’s Gujarat correspondent Mahesh Langa.

Mr. 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 First Information Report (FIR). In the remand application, police said that he was running DA Enterprise in the names of his relative and wife.

The company in question is owned by Mr. Manoj Langa, a relative of Mr. Mahesh Langa, and the latter’s wife is a silent partner with no rights to undertake any transaction or access bank accounts.

“The police case hinges 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,” Mr. Rajguru said.

The police said that Mr. Mahesh Langa was unable to explain the presence of ₹20 lakh recovered from his home.

The counsel claimed that the ₹20 lakh found in his home was kept for financial exigencies and denied that it was linked with the alleged scam.

The FIR states that the alleged fraud was committed between February 1 and May 1, 2023 and the prime accused is Dhruvi Enterprise, which allegedly created six firms from a single PAN to transfer and receive a bogus input tax credit under GST to unscrupulous recipients by issuance of fake invoices without the supply of goods.

DA Enterprise is one of the companies mentioned in the FIR.

Published - October 09, 2024 10:02 pm IST