The Central Bureau of Investigation probing the multi-crore ponzi scam is convinced that a senior Trinamool Congress leader was controlling Saradha chief Sudipto Sen’s movements after he fled Kolkata on April 14, last year downing the shutters of his chit fund company that defaulted payments to the tune of several hundred crores to its depositors.
According to reports, Sen had left for Kathmandu at the instance of his political bosses but then returned to Dehradun from where he was asked to proceed to Haridwar and then to the Jim Corbett National Park.
From here he went to Haldwani where he wanted to stay for a few days but “one night at about 3 am he was woken up by a caller from Kolkata who directed him to immediately leave the place and proceed towards Jammu & Kashmir,” sources said.
Investigators said that at one point of time Sen was also asked by his controller from Kolkata to sneak into Pakistan Occupied Kashmir in order to evade arrest. And in fact Sen was waiting at a hotel at Sonmarg where he was expecting funds to come.
But during this period unpaid depositors, agents and the Opposition literally ransacked the Saradha office all over Bengal and gheraoed the Trinamool Congress Bhavan demanding Sen’s arrest making it difficult for those regulating his movement to keep him away. Curiously, it was at this juncture that Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee told the media in Kolkata that she had reports that Sen was somewhere in North India and would soon be captured.
Indeed he was from Sonmarg, sources said adding Sen was “perhaps ditched in the last moment” by a nervous lot of politicians who did not want to let the situation spin out of their control. It was also considered that forcing Sen to move into POK could give the story an uglier twist.
Hence, instead of sending funds police were sent to arrest him apparently in order to allow the tempo of the movement to calm down for some while. His interrogators have found that Sen was carrying three mobile phones with him while Saradha director Debjani Mukherjee was carrying two. A third Arvind Chauhan the driver was carrying two phones with him.
“It is being seen which of these or whether all these or any other phone was being used to contact those in Kolkata,” sources said adding the agency had identified that politician.
Meanwhile, retired Supreme Court Judge Ashok Ganguly who had to quit as the Chairman of the State Human Rights Commission following political pressure built by the Trinamool Congress that lobbied hard to get him sacked for his alleged involvement in a molestation case on Wednesday came out all guns blazing against the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for her role as the then Railway Minister when the Railways had entered into a shady deal with Saradha Tours and Travels.
Though he would not take her name he questioned how the Railways could enter into a deal with a company that did not fulfil the necessary criterion. “How the IRCTC could enter into a contract with a company that was only three years’ old ignoring the requisite criterion of five years. The then Railway Minister must answer it without crying conspiracy against the Opposition” he said adding “one will commit theft and if there is an inquiry the person will cry conspiracy. This cannot happen.”