The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Gujarat’s police registered an FIR against The Hindu journalist Mahesh Langa after a businessman accused him of cheating, PTI cited Ahmedabad police commissioner G.S. Malik as saying on Tuesday (October 29).
This is the third FIR against Langa – the first was registered in an alleged GST evasion case and the second in a theft case against him after documents belonging to the Gujarat Maritime Board were allegedly found in his home.
Langa has been jailed in the GST evasion case since October 9.
According to Malik, who was speaking to reporters on Tuesday about the cheating case, a businessman in the advertising industry accused Langa of duping him of Rs 28.68 lakh and threatening to smear his business when asked to return the money.
“Langa offered to assist the complainant with his advertising business through his connections and positive news coverage. He then borrowed Rs 23 lakh from the businessman in June and promised to repay him in cash,” PTI quoted Malik as saying.
Malik then said Langa allegedly billed the businessman for Rs 5.68 lakh for a birthday party for the latter’s wife and promised to reimburse the amount on the day of the party.
But when the businessman “requested Langa to return the money, he resorted to intimidation and warned of consequences citing his connections” and allegedly said he “can damage his business through negative media coverage”, Malik said as per PTI.
The news agency also cited the police officer as saying that the businessman decided to complain to the police after learning of the other cases against Langa.
In the GST evasion case, where it is alleged that a network of 200 bogus firms worked to defraud the government of GST, Langa is accused of operating a firm called DA Enterprise, which is named in the FIR.
On Tuesday the Enforcement Directorate claimed that Langa ‘controlled’ DA Enterprise and that unaccounted-for cash was found at its premises, PTI reported.
“DA Enterprise was being used to route money by artificially increasing expenses in the form of fake billings and receiving cash in return. Money was transferred to Dhruvi Enterprise and it was then withdrawn as cash and routed back to Mahesh through hawala network,” Malik alleged on Tuesday.
Malik noted that Langa’s wife as well as his cousin Manoj – who reportedly owns DA Enterprise – claimed that Langa operated the firm and that the police found the two to be ‘innocent’. Neither was arrested in the case.
He also claimed that Langa lived a ‘lavish’ lifestyle despite him and his wife earning Rs 15 lakh a year, reported PTI.
However, Langa’s lawyer Vedanta Rajguru told The Hindu earlier this month that his client was neither a director nor a promoter of DA Enterprise and that no transactions or signatures were made in his name.
Rajguru also said that Langa, who reportedly called his arrest in the case “politically motivated”, was not named in the primary FIR.
Meanwhile, the Times of India reported that an Ahmedabad court denied bail to Langa in the case on Monday, finding that he “seems to have played an active role in this offence”. “The investigation is underway and there is a possibility of evidence being tampered with.”
Langa’s arrest and the cases against him have generated misgivings in the media. On Monday, four journalists’ bodies, including the Press Club of India, condemned the second FIR being registered against him.
“It is shocking that the mere possession of documents can be used by the state to register a FIR against a citizen and in this case, a journalist of considerable standing,” the journalist bodies said.
Their statement highlighted that a journalist would, by the very nature of his work, need to peruse sensitive documents.
“It is axiomatic that journalists will, due to the nature of their profession and in the pursuance of public interest, be in possession of all kinds of material, including documents, accessed from various sources. To implicate and incriminate mediapersons for the mere possession of documents is tantamount to a fundamental assault on the profession itself.”
It also said that Langa’s being named in the second FIR amounted to his being “hounded” by the police.