MYSURU: A recent government notification to attach properties of Green Buds Agro Farm Company Limited has raised hopes of reunion of hundreds of families across the state. After the company turned out to be fraud in 2012, money agents and big investors had fled their villages and cities all over the state and had taken shelter in far off places.
They were forced to do so after the micro investors from whom they had collected money for the ponzy scheme, started harassing them. Most of them were even beaten up and their houses ransacked.
G V Lakshmidevi of Sandur in Ballari district, who is the president of Green Buds Depositors Protection Committee, which is fighting for the cause of investors, had made Mysuru her second home for the last four years, leaving behind her aged parents in the village. She had invested `10 lakh of which more than half of it was invested by her relatives. She couldn’t bear the harassment to return their money and finally fled.More than 5.60 lakh people had invested more than `100 crore in the scheme.
Manjunath G P, a farmer from Chikkajogihalli village in Kudligi taluk of Ballari district, had invested `10 lakh, most of it was collected from fellow farmers in the village. When they did not get returns, about 60 micro-investors ransacked his house. The incident left his wife in the hospital for three months while Manjunath had to quit the village and settle in Mysuru.“For almost two years, my children were hesitant to go out of home as the investors were threatening them to reveal my whereabouts. My family got police protection but for how long they can do it,” he said, adding he will return home soon.
Same is with Roopa of Mudukanapura in T Narasipura taluk.Roopa, ASHA worker, used her contacts to get an investment of `25 lakh. But after the company turned hostile, she had taken shelter in Bengaluru along with her husband and two children where she is working as a garment worker.