CUTTACK: The Orissa High Court on Thursday dismissed the bail petition of Gautam Kundu, chairman of Rose Valley Group, who has been in custody since his arrest by the CBI on March 25, 2015.
Kundu is the prime accused in the multi-crore Rose Valley chit fund scam, which allegedly defrauded lakhs of investors across India to the tune of Rs 17,000 crore and the company is allegedly yet to refund over Rs 9,000 crore to investors. The court rejected the bail plea in connection with cases registered at the police stations in Buguda, Nuapada and Jeypore in Odisha.
Justice Gourishankar Satapathy observed that the Rose Valley Group, under Kundu’s leadership, collected vast sums of money from the public through unauthorised investment schemes promising high returns. These schemes were run without any regulatory approval from the RBI or the SEBI.
He noted that many of the victims were small investors from economically weaker sections of society. “It may so happen, if such persons are cheated of their entire life savings, it may run the risk of forcing such persons to commit crime or losing life since it is not uncommon in our society that some people commit suicide due to extreme poverty,” the court stated.
Despite the defence argument that “bail is the rule and jail is the exception”, the judge ruled that the sheer magnitude of the scam, both in terms of the amount involved and the number of victims, places Kundu’s case in the category of exceptions. The court concluded that the bail application was “devoid of merit” and dismissed it.