Senior Congress leader and former Minister Niranjan Patnaik on Sunday demanded that CBI must subject chit fund scamsters to custodial interrogation to expose the larger conspiracy.
Patnaik said that while these raids unmask flourishing of chit fund companies under the patronage of BJD leaders and bigwigs, they can at best be preliminary steps in a long and complex investigation.
Obviously the scamsters had been anticipating these raids for a long time and must have either destroyed records or recreated documents to protect them from criminal liability, he said.
“I was not surprised that a prominent BJD leader raided by the CBI is confident that the investigating agency would have found nothing against me. No one anticipating a CBI raid will hold on to incriminating materials,” he said. He lamented that the Govt refused to hand over investigation to the CBI and allowed the police to do as much of a white-wash as possible to minimize the damage to the BJD’s reputation, particularly before the election.
Why has the CBI not examined the jailed scamstersIJ They are in Jharpada jail and CBI is moving around the country side in search of clues to the conspiracy. What stops the CBI from taking Pradeep Sethi, Prasant Das and others on remandIJ Pradeep Sethi had taken the name of politicians and Ministers in a TV interview and he can provide evidence to the CBI to substantiate his charge. What has surfaced till now is the proverbial ‘tip of the ice berg’. Some assets of these companies have been confiscated by the state police. But, there is no trace of 80 per cent of the money defrauded and the CBI has to do a lot more to do justice to the hapless victims of the largest fraud in Odisha history, said Patnaik.