The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Senior journalist Mahesh Langa, in judicial custody in a GST evasion case, has been booked again by Gujarat police over the alleged possession of confidential government documents.
Langa is senior assistant editor with The Hindu. The Ahmedabad crime branch arrested him on October 10 in connection with allegations that he was part of a nexus of companies that evaded the Goods and Services Tax. However, as has been reported before, he is not named in the FIR. Langa’s lawyer Vedanta Rajguru has also said that his client was neither a director nor a promoter of the DA Enterprise company, which has been named in the FIR in the case.
This time, Indian Express has reported quoting Gandhinagar superintendent of police Ravi Teja Vasamsetty, Langa has been booked on charges of possession of documents related to the Gujarat Maritime Board.
The SP did not respond to the Express’s queries on the sections under which Langa had been booked in the fresh FIR, saying only that the documents were recovered from Langa’s possession during his arrest in the GST fraud case.
He is the sole accused in the case, police said.
The Express report also noted that the Ahmedabad Detection of Crime Branch on October 22 arrested five more persons in the ongoing investigation into the alleged GST evasion racket. Allegedly 220 shell companies, many of them based in Gujarat, are a part of it.
Langa had moved the Gujarat high court challenging his 10-day police remand, the report has it. He had called his arrest “politically motivated”. On October 14, he withdrew the petition during the plea hearing, the report says.
Langa’s arrest has generated misgivings in the media community. Many journalists have vouched for his integrity. Others have taken note of a recent report he did on the impact of the ban on Russian-origin diamonds on Gujarat’s diamond industry.
October 26: The Hindu‘s reaction
On October 26, The Hindu’s editor Suresh Nambath posted his reactions on the second FIR against Langa on X.
“We note with deep concern that a second FIR was registered against Mahesh Langa, The Hindu’s Senior Assistant Editor who is based in Gujarat, on October 22, 2024, at Sector 7 police station in Gandhinagar for possession of some documents related to the Gujarat Maritime Board,” he wrote.
In subsequent posts he added that the police’s decision to not make the FIR accessible to the public was unacceptable. Nambath also urged the Gujarat police to drop the charges, citing journalists need to process documents of confidential nature in their line of work.
“District Superintendent of Police Ravi Teja Vasamsetty said the next day that the online FIR was not accessible to the public as it had been put under the “sensitive” category. This is completely unacceptable.
“We would like to reiterate that journalists are required to process documents, including those of a confidential nature, in the line of their work. They are guided by the larger public interest in perusing documents that are official or confidential.
“To file charges against them for possession of such documents is to undermine their journalistic work and their fundamental rights and to subvert the public interest. We urge the Gujarat police to drop the charges relating to the possession of classified documents against Mahesh.
Note: This article, first published on October 24, 2024, was republished on October 26, with the update of Suresh Nambath’s tweets included.