The CBI probing the multi-crore chit fund case has named former Union Minister Matang Singh and Sibnarain Das, the mentor of jailed Saradha chief Sudipto Sen, in the supplementary chargesheet it filed on Friday before the designated Alipore Court. The chargesheet was filed on a day when Calcutta High Court directed the State Government to file a report on the money spent by Justice Shyamal Sen Commission set up by the Government to inquire into the chit fund case.
The chargesheet filed in the court of Haradhan Mukherjee also included the names of companies owned by Singh. The names of these companies are NE Television, NE Multimedia, Positive Radio and Impulse Production. Charges were brought under Sections 120B, 420 and 409 of the IPC. The filing of the chargesheet came close on the heels of jailed Trinamool MP Kunal Ghosh threatening to take the “extreme step” (read suicide) in an “ultimate letter” written to the said court. In the letter he alleged that the Agency was soft-pedaling the case allowing senior Trinamool Congress politicians to roam free while “keeping me confined on fictitious grounds.
Ghosh alleged that powerful Bengal Minister Madan Mitra had been kept virtually out of the jail at a Government hospital in the name of illness with all the freedom of tampering with vital evidences. Sources close to Ghosh also alleged that the recent arrests of smaller ponzy masterminds made by the CID could be the part of a larger conspiracy to damage evidence as “the newly arrested chit fund owners were only puppets in the hands of many top Trinamool leaders and Ministers both inside and outside the jail.” Ghosh had earlier attempted suicide inside the prison.
Meanwhile, in a related development the Calcutta High Court on Friday directed the State Government to file within four weeks a report on the expenditure incurred by Justice Sen Commission in inquiring into the chit fund case. Hearing a PIl the Division Bench of Chief Justice Nirmala Chellur and Justice JM Bagchi directed the State Government to file a report on the money spent by the Commission.