Amitabh Bachchan's smuggled goods - If plagiarism is the best form of flattery - we can be proud!
"If music be the food of love, play on", said the Bard and if plagiarism is the best form of flattery, we in TIOL can justifiably be proud of the flattery heaped on us. Our editorial on 4th December highlighted the fact that the Bachchans had walked through the green channels of Air Customs without paying customs duty amounting to over Rs. 35 lakhs.
All major news channels and newspapers carried the story more than 24 hours after we informed the Nation that Amitabh Bachchan and his son had actually owned up evading Customs Duty and even paid up the duty - and not a channel, not a newspaper had the grace to acknowledge the story to TIOL! In fact the great Times of India carried the same picture of the Bachchans that we did! Reporting has become so easy - just pick it up from some website which does all the work!
My colleague who helped me in writing the story on the Madras High Court judgement in the Income Tax 40a(1a) story was aghast on seeing the story verbatim in another site. Only he and I know how many hours we spent in making that story and all that somebody had to do was just copy and paste it in his site!
Recently we had carried a report of the Chennai Customs arresting a poor pax for carrying gold ornaments valued at less than Rs. 2 lakhs in his rectum for the fear of Sri Lanka Customs. And the Bachans could walk away with about a Crore of Rupees of imported goods and not a whimper!
A Member of the CESTAT in a speech we carried recently mentioned,
1. Laws are spider webs through which the big flies pass and the little ones get caught.
- Balzac (1799-1850)
2. Laws are like cobwebs, for any trifling or powerless things falls into them, they hold it fast; but if a thing of any size falls into them it breaks, the mesh and escapes.
- Anacharsis (600 BC)
And the Lady Bachchan was angry that the Service Tax Department asked her family a few questions!