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Saradha chit fund owner’s complaint to be forwarded to CBI: Kolkata court
In April, Sen wrote to the CMM court 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
The chief metropolitan magistrate’s (CMM) court in Kolkata ordered on Wednesday that a complaint letter from Saradha chit fund owner Sudipta Sen, sent to the court from Presidency correctional home alleging financial irregularities at Contai municipality in East Midnapore district, should be forwarded to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), court officials said.
In April, Sen wrote to the CMM court 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 was sanctioned, nor the money returned.
The Contai municipality chairman at that time was Soumendu Adhikari, the younger brother of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Suvendu Adhikari. Both were in Trinamool Congress (TMC) in 2011-12.
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Suvendu Adhikari joined the BJP in December 2020. His brother followed him a few weeks later. Contai is their hometown. Their father Sisir Adhikari and brother Dibyendu Dibyendu are TMC Lok Sabha members from East Midnapore.
Suvendu Adhikari welcomed the CMM court’s decision to forward Sen’s complaint to the CBI.
“Sen was made to write the letter. I know when and how it was done. I wrote to the CBI about this conspiracy in December last year. My job has become easier now. Let the CBI start a probe,” he said.
Sen, who was chairman of the Saradha group of companies, was arrested by West Bengal police from Kashmir in 2013 while he was on the run. He is 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 under orders the Supreme Court passed in 2014.
