Gujarat: Case against 2 media firm officials for cheating, forgery

Police have registered a case against two officials of a media company for allegedly forging documents to show higher circulation of two newspapers in Gujarat to cheat government and private agencies for advertisement revenue, a police official said on Sunday.

The FIR was registered here on Saturday against P V S Sarma and Sitaram Adukiya, both directors of the firm publishing a Gujarati and an English daily, after a complaint was lodged by an officer of the Income Tax Department, an official from Umra police station said.

Sarma, who is also a local BJP functionary, and Adukiya allegedly conspired to make false entries in the company ledger books to create bogus documents in order to show higher circulation of their newspapers to the Directorate of Advertisement and Visual Publicity (DAVP), a government agency, and private advertisers, as per the FIR.

This way, they cheated the government of around Rs 70 lakh and private advertisers of Rs two crore from 2008-09 till October 21, 2020, the FIR said.