I-T Department searches Raghav Bahl's residence, The Quint office

Income Tax officials conducted searches at The Quint founder Raghav Bahl’s Noida residence and his news portal office early Thursday.

Soon after, the media baron in a statement to Editor’s Guild said: “While I was in Mumbai this morning, dozens of I-T officials descended on my residence and The Quint’s office for a “survey”. We are a fully tax compliant entity, and will provide all access to all appropriate financial documents.”

He said he spoke to an I-T official who was part of the searches 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 Editor’s Guild 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 smartphones to take unauthorised copies of this material,” Bahl added.