Infuriated by exposure of a series of corruption

Unmesh Gujarathi

Sprouts Exclusive

With the Hindi daily, ‘Navabharat’, trapped in a series of corrupt deals, including the collection of advertisement revenue based on manipulated circulation figures, has begun threatening its employees with dire consequences and has also begun attacking them to pressurize them to withdraw the cases against the newspaper filed them.

The management of the Hindi daily ‘Navabharat’, infuriated by corruption being exposed one after the other, is now bent on taking the lives of its own employees. The uproar is so much that, when Vivek Prasad, Executive Director of ‘Navabharat’ reached the residence of Santosh Jaiswar of the Circulation Department, near Mulund, called him and threatened to kill him using caste-related abuses for not withdrawing the cases going on in various courts.

Being threatened, Santosh Jaiswar wrote a letter to concerned officers and DCP Zone-7, Mulund (W), after which Mulund police registered a complaint against Vivek Prasad.

The Special Investigation Team of Sprouts is in possession of the evidence which has revealed that Navabharat Management is harassing the employees at all levels. Dozens of employees have been victims of harassment by the management, and some of them have shown courage and approached the court, due to which the ‘Navabharat’ management is adopting all kinds of coercive tactics.

Scams of circulation, land plot, ‘shell’ companies exposed

The ‘Navabharat’ management has mastered itself in corruption. The Special Investigation Team of Sprouts had earlier exposed the circulation scam, the CIDCO land scam in Sanpada, and companies and firms created for tax evasion. Most of these companies are shell companies, through which the ‘Navabharat’ management is defrauding the government of thousands of crores of rupees every year in revenue. In this regard, a complaint along with proof has been produced to the concerned departments, currently which is under investigation.

Director grabbed the journalist’s quota flat

Deshbhushan Kulbhushan (D. B. Sharma), who was the director of Navabharat, illegally acquired a journalist’s quota flat in a building constructed by MHADA in a posh locality of Powai on the basis of fake documents. The same has also been disclosed by the Special Investigation Team of Sprouts earlier. After the disclosure of the Special Investigation Team of Sprouts, the MHADA administration is preparing to take action against D. B. Sharma after the probe. Dozens of ‘Navabharat’ employees still live in rented houses, and instead of helping them get flats, D.B. Sharma himself grabbed the journalist’s quota flat.

Vivek Prasad works like a syndicate

Vivek Prasad, the executive director of Navabharat, works like a syndicate. Vivek Prasad and his team members leave no stone unturned to suppress the employees who raise their voices. He and his team is the biggest masterminds of the circulation scam.

PF department was also cheated

Employees Provident Fund Organization (EPFO) is also included in the list of scams of ‘Navabharat’ management. This matter came to light when a complaint was made in Vashi and Bandra offices of PF. The publication of ‘Navabharat’ started in Mumbai on October 11, 1997, but the management has not deducted and remitted PF contributions of dozens of its employees till 2005. After starting this, the PF rules were kept on hold.

The Vashi PF office has also issued an order in this matter. In its clarification, Navabharat Management first said that they were not aware of the rule. Later, the clever-minded management got involved in ‘managing’ the PF officers. According to the evidence in the hands of Sprouts’ Special Investigation Team, the management of ‘Navabharat’ initially tried to take advantage of it under SME, but forgot that by showing 4 different editions (Nagpur, Mumbai, Nashik, Pune) for advertising, it would be difficult for them to recover thousands of crores of rupees every year from the government.

The Sprouts’ SIT also found in its investigation that ‘Navabharat’ management has obtained certificates of different advertisement rates for different editions by ‘managing’ the concerned departments (DAVP, DGIPR) and by showing the same certificates thousands of rupees are being collected from the government every year as well as takes private advertisements on the basis of the same.

But to save tax (Income Tax, GST, SGST) makes a lot of foul play, in which the only balance sheet of all the editions shows the PAN number of Nagpur only. Concerned departments are also keeping an eye on this scam of ‘Navabharat’ management and are preparing to take action.