Even as the State Crime Branch is leaving no stone unturned to get remand of tainted Saradha Group’s CMD Sudipta Sen and Director Debjani Mukherjee now, nine months back Sen and two of his officials, who were booked in a cheating case, were allegedly let off by the local police.
Had the case been pursued seriously then and a probe initiated to verify authenticity of the non-banking financial institution, money of many poor and unsuspecting people could have been saved from running into the jaws of chit fund sharks.
An investigation revealed, a case was registered with Sahadevkhunta police in Balasore on the direction of SDJM court against Sen, Saradha Group’s vice-president Sudip Banerjee, development officer (Odisha) Nayan Kumar Pati and administrative officer Pitabas Nayak on September 13 last year.
Though very next day Banerjee was arrested from Kolkata and produced in the court, police did not take any action against Sen and two others for the reasons best known to them.
As mentioned in the case record, complainant Mithun Samanta had lodged a case in the court after the police on September 3 refused to accept his FIR against Sen and his officials. Despite the court direction the intention of the police was so loud and clear that they booked the accused persons for very negligible offences.
Initially, police had registered a case under Sections 341, 294, 506, 34 of IPC and Sections 4, 5, 6 of the Prize Chits and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act 1978.
However, the investigation police officer was forced to add three more Sections following the written complaint from additional public prosecutor (APP) Arun Behera in the court.
When Behera called for the case diary, police added Sections 420, 467 and 468 of IPC along with the Section 3 of the money circulation banning Act leading to the rejection of Banerjee’s bail plea on September 17.
Although in his complaint Samanta, the then branch manager of Saradha’s Balasore branch office, had charged the four of duping crores of rupees of public, surprisingly, the names of Sen and two others did not find any mention in the charge-sheet submitted by the police in the court in December.
Sources alleged that the investigating officer and supervising officer took huge amount to let off the three. Meanwhile, Banerjee who was granted bail by the high court (HC) on October 17, has been asked for personal appearance in the SDJM court on June 25.
Police, however, have refuted the allegation of any wrong doing. The then IIC of Sahadevkhunta Maheswar Sethi said the case became weak after Samanta filed a compromise petition in the HC. “Hence we did not have any scope to round up three others,” he reasoned.
But reliable sources said the compromise petition was filed after police submitted the charge-sheet. Balasore SP Amrita Dash too denied the allegations. She said the complainant did not cooperate properly and police had to toil hard to prepare the charge-sheet after Banerjee’s arrest.
