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Protests against Saradha, Rose Valley reach Delhi

NewsProtests against Saradha, Rose Valley reach Delhi

Duped investors were not allowed to protest in Kolkata against the Bengal government’s inaction in the cases.

 

More than 200 defrauded investors and agents of various chit fund companies, including Rose Valley and Saradha, sat on a dharna here this week for three days, demanding a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation not only into the multi-crore Rose Valley and Saradha scams, but also against several other smaller chit fund companies that operated at the village and town levels in Bengal and have also fled with the money of these poor people.

These protesters from West Bengal sat on the dharna in Jantar Mantar with their mouths covered in black cloth behind some posters that depicted West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee as someone who has been “killing” democracy in the state, while some held placards that said, “Maa ki ansoo sukh gayi, Mamata sarkar aur nahi.

Sumanto Das, one of the defrauded investors from Malda district of West Bengal, who had invested his life’s savings with two companies—Waris Finance and Burdwan Sunnmarg—expecting huge returns, came to know that these companies were fraud and had fled with his money after the Saradha bubble burst in 2013.

While protesting here in Delhi, Das asked why nobody was raising questions about the many small chit fund companies that also fled with poor people’s money. “There had been more than 300 small chit fund companies that operated in Bengal and lured customers to invest in their companies in lieu of huge returns. When the news of Saradha broke, even these companies started to wind up and run away with people’s money. However, the sad part is that nobody is talking about them and no investigation is being done into these companies. We demand that these companies be also booked and poor people’s money returned,” Das said.

Rakesh Mondal, another defrauded investor, said that he, along with his three family members, had invested more than Rs 3 lakh with Ramel Industries in Bengal, and ever since the scam broke out, they have been fighting for getting back their money and is hopeful that only the CBI can bring back their money.

“We are poor people from Bengal; these companies came and promised us great returns. We did not have any suspicion about these companies because their directors and owners were seen with ruling party officials multiple times. We thought that the government was behind these companies; little did we know that we were being cheated. We have been fighting for years to get our money back, but nothing has happened. Both the Centre and the state are not being able to do anything, they are fighting with each other,” Mondal said.

Many sitting on dharna also complained about how they were not allowed to protest in Kolkata against Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and her government’s failure to act against these chit fund companies and the state government’s blocking of the CBI from investigating these multi-crore scams.

Tapan Majhi, a resident of West Midnapore, asked why Mamata Banerjee was not letting the CBI investigate the chit fund scams and what she had to hide. “Mamata Banerjee is muzzling democracy; she is not letting people say anything against her or her government in Bengal. We are not even allowed to protest, while she can sit on a dharna against the Central Bureau of Investigation, which had gone to investigate a scam that robbed thousands of crores of rupees from the poor people of Bengal. Why is she so adamant on saving a police officer? Why did she not protest when the poor people who lost their hard-earned money were crying?” Majhi asked.

The slugfest between the Mamata Banerjee government in Bengal and the CBI began earlier this month when the CBI had gone to Kolkata to question Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam. Kumar was heading an SIT to investigate into this multi-crore scam that affected over 17 lakh people in Bengal.  The chit fund scam first broke in West Bengal in April 2013 when the Saradha scam hit the state. At the time, many other chit fund companies were operating in the state, either in the name of cooperative companies, banks or micro financing companies.

The poor and mostly rural people in Bengal were lured by these companies to invest with them in lieu of huge returns, but little did they people know that they were being duped. Two of the biggest chit fund scams were engineered by the Saradha group of companies and Rose Valley. According to estimates, these two companies together fled with more than Rs 20,000 crore.

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