In curious development the Calcutta High Court currently hearing the PIl demanding CBI inquiry into the Saradha chit fund scam on Tuesday made an observation that could enable the central investigating agencies like the ED to take up the probe which was currently being conducted by the Bidhannagar Police.
A division bench of the court remarked that the case involved offences of national and international nature and would need specialised agencies to deal with it. “The court did not question the competence of the State police, it only stated that the kind of economic offences under probe could be handled by the specialised teams available with the Central Government only,” advocate Subroto Mukherjee who had filed the PIl said.
The court also allowed the Directorate of Enforcement which had earlier filed a petition taking suo motu cognisance of the case to inquire into the case. “We had approached the court after taking suo motu cognisance of the scam based on media reports in order to seek a direction so that we can investigate into the case and the court was pleased to order the same,” ED counsel B Baisya said.
Baisya said the State police had not given the assistance to the ED “which we had earlier sought from them,” adding the Directorate had evidence to suggest large scale money-laundering in the multi-crore scam that had affected about a lakh people.
The court also directed the CBI to submit an affidavit whether Bengal would come into the ambit of its current investigations of chit fund scams in Assam and Tripura. The agency would submit its affidavit on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, three persons who had invested in Saradha company had committed in the past 24 hours, taking the toll to 14, police said.
Elsewhere Justice (retd) Shyamal Sen Commission conducting a separate probe into the scam had received about 50,000 complaints till Tuesday Commission sources said.