NEW DELHI — The Income Tax (I-T) Department searched media baron Raghav Bahl's home and the office premises of The Quint on Thursday in connection with a case of alleged tax evasion, officials said.
A team from the I-T Department raided Bahl's premises in Noida early morning and are looking for documents and other evidence related to a case of "bogus long term capital gains (LTCG) received by various beneficiaries", they said.
Bahl, who was in Mumbai, said in a statement that he was on his way to Delhi and his wife and mother were confined to the residence and not allowed to speak to anybody.
"I have got little else to go on right now," he said in a statement to the media.
Editor-in-Chief of The News Minute tweeted that I-T officials had also reached their office in Bengaluru.
Bahl's Quintillion Media runs The Quint which is based in New Delhi and has stakes in The News Minute.
Apart from Bahl, three other "beneficiaries" and professionals, J Lalwani, Anoop Jain and Abhimanyu, are also being searched as part of the same action, officials said.
Officials said their business links to offshore entities are being investigated.
LTCG is broadly defined as the tax paid on profit generated by an asset such as real estate, shares or share-oriented products held for a particular time-frame.