A Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice of India, NV Ramana, on Wednesday, 15 December, granted interim protection to The Quint’s founder, Raghav Bahl, in a money laundering case filed by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) against him.
The apex court, in its order, issued a notice and passed an interim direction for no coercive action to be taken against Bahl.
A bench comprising CJI Ramana, and Justices AS Bopanna and Hima Kohli, heard the special leave petition filed by the media entrepreneur on Wednesday.
Senior advocate Vikas Singh, appearing for Raghav Bahl, submitted before the top court that Bahl had already filed his income tax returns. Despite that, the High Court had denied him interim protection in his plea seeking to quash the money laundering case filed against him.
The ED’s Case
The case which was filed against Raghav Bahl in 2019, stems from a charge sheet filed by the Income Tax department for alleged non-disclosure of funds amounting to approximately Rs 2.45 crore used for buying a property in London.
The Delhi High Court had denied him protection from coercive action on 3 December, but had also asked the ED to respond to Bahl’s petition demanding that the money laundering case against him be quashed.
The matter had thereby been adjourned for further hearing on 27 January.
The ED had initiated proceedings against Bahl based on a complaint by the Income Tax department of alleged irregularities in his returns filed for the assessment year 2018-19.
Raghav Bahl Repeatedly Denies Charges, Writes to FM, Voluntarily Discloses Investments
Raghav Bahl, however, has repeatedly denied the charges against him. In the Delhi High Court, his counsel Mukul Rohatgi had reiterated as well that the money laundering proceedings against Bahl cannot be allowed to go on as the authorities have cleared Bahl’s tax returns for assessment year 2018-19 after he refiled it.
In a letter to the Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman written in 2019, Bahl had stated that he is “getting the sense of being hounded for doing no wrong despite paying all taxes honestly and diligently”. He had also voluntarily disclosed complete investments in the London property.
“It is my hope that by voluntarily disclosing the information below, I can facilitate the inquiries of the ministry and its departments and provide them with an opportunity to correct the mistakes and errors committed by them thus far,” Bahl had written in his letter to the FM.
“The disclosures below should remove any iota of doubt and demolish even the remotest pretence to continue with any probe or investigation as, along with the material information provided earlier, they clearly establish that every penny (quite literally) invested to buy the property in London which has become the subject of investigation, has been paid through the incomes of myself and my immediate family members.”
Raids on Bahl’s Residence & The Quint’s Office
Income Tax Officers had in October 2018, entered the office of Quintillion Media Pvt Ltd in Noida, which runs the website The Quint and is owned by Raghav Bahl. According to the I-T officer leading the team, they were conducting a “search” on one floor of the office, and a “survey” on the other.
I-T officers were also present at the residence of The Quint’s Editor-in-Chief Raghav Bahl and CEO Ritu Kapur, and the office of Quintype (another company within the same corporate group), and also conducted a survey at The News Minute (which the Quintillion Media holds a stake in) in Bengaluru.
The search at the Noida premises ended almost 22 hours later in the wee hours of the the next morning, and the raids were condemned by The Editors Guild of India, journalists and politicians alike, as indicative of an “undeclared emergency”.
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