The Calcutta High Court has directed the state government to submit a report within four weeks, detailing the number of pending cases against Sudipto Sen, the kingpin behind the Saradha scam, who has been in custody since 2013.
During the hearing on Thursday, the division bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Gaurang Kanth ordered the state to submit a report detailing the cases against Sen, from 2013 onwards, where he has been shown as arrested and why he has not been produced in court for them.
“My client has been in custody for 13 years. The total number of cases in West Bengal is 389 out of which 76 have been taken by the Central Bureau of Investigation. Out of the remaining 313 cases, my client has got bail in 289 cases. But in the remaining 23 cases the state has shown Sudipto Sen arrested, but has not produced him in any court, in such a situation let bail be granted,” Sen’s counsel submitted in court.
Sudipto Sen, who was chairman of the Saradha group of companies, was arrested by the West Bengal police from Kashmir in 2013, while he was on the run. He has been in judicial custody since then.
The Saradha chit fund scam involves an estimated Rs. 2,460 crore raised from around 1.8 million depositors from different states, including West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.
The CBI is probing the chit-fund scam and has questioned over a dozen TMC MLAs and MPs, including ministers, in connection with the scam.
Problems started in the company in 2012, when SEBI asked the group to stop accepting money from investors and obtain the regulator’s permission to run its schemes. By January 2013, the company was engulfed in a crisis when for the first time Saradha Group’s cash inflows were found to be lower than its outflows. The scheme collapsed by April, prompting agents and investors to file police complaints.
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The West Bengal government initially set up a Special Investigation Team (SIT), headed by the then Kolkata Police Commissioner, Rajeev Kumar, to probe the case.
The case was transferred to the CBI in 2014 at the behest of the Supreme Court. CBI claims Kumar as a potential accused in the case who has also not handed over crucial documents to them.
Meanwhile, Kumar first grabbed headlines in February 2019, when the CBI was stopped by the Kolkata Police, from questioning him. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee rushed to the spot and staged a three-day sit-in protest against CBI’s move. The Supreme Court then ordered interrogation of Rajeev Kumar at a location outside West Bengal to avoid further showdown.
In 2023, Sen had written to the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate court in Kolkata stating that in 2011-12 he was pressured to pay a few crores of rupees to the Contai Municipality for sanctioning a high-rise complex of Saradha Realty, but neither was the building plan sanctioned, nor the money returned, that later under courts order was sent to the Central Bureau of Investigation.