The Income Tax department on Thursday raided premises of former Network 18 promoter Raghav Bahl. He is also the co-founder of media organisation the Quint. The IT raids were carried out allegedly for evading tax on undisclosed income. The Quint office, too, has been raided by IT officials.
Quint's editor-in-chief Ritu Kapoor has not been reacted yet. As of now, the Income Tax team is carrying on the searches and recording statements of Raghav Bahl's account officials.
PTI reported a team of sleuths raided the residence of Bahl in neighbouring Noida early morning and are looking for documents and other evidence related to the case under probe.
It is understood that the searches are being conducted at the premises of a few other people as part of the ITD action to probe tax evasion by a set of business professionals.
Reacting to the whole incident, Raghav Bahl issued a statement which read, "I have a matter of great concern to share with the Guild. While I was in Mumbai this morning, dozens of IT officials descended on my residence and The Quint's office for a 'survey'. We are a fully tax complaint entity, and will provide all access to all appropriate finance documents. However, I have just spoken to the officer on my premises, on Mr Yadav, and requested him, strongly, to not try and pick up or see any other mail/document which is likely to contain very serious/sensitive journalistic material. If they do that, then we shall seek extremely strong recourse. I do hope the EG will back us on this, and thereby set a precedent for any such exercise that may happen on any other journalistic entity in the future. They should also not misuse their smart phones to take unauthorized copies of this material. I am now on my way back to Delhi."
Raghav Bahl is also former managing director of Network18— which operates, through its subsidiaries, channels such as CNBC TV18, CNN-IBN, IBN7, CNBC Awaaz and Colors. After his stint with Network 18, Bahl has founded new company, Quintillion Media Pvt.
Raghav Bahl was also associated with CNBC, Viacom, BBC, Star TV, A&E, Time Warner and Forbes. He also worked as a Management Consultant at AF Ferguson followed by a stint at Amex.
Notably, Bahl's exit form Network 18 shocked the media industry. In early 2012 Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries had bought debentures in Network18’s promoter group firms, convertible into shares at any time within 10 years of putting in the cash into Network18. However, Reliance exercised the option barely two and a half years later, which led to Raghav Bahl leaving the company.
At Quintillion, Raghav Bahl's wife Ritu Kapoor is the managing director and is the editor-in-chief of thequint.com.
