Amid speculations whether differences between Mamata Banerjee and Mukul Roy could be patched up, the latter on Saturday made more uneasy statements for the Chief Minister contradicting her often repeated stance that it was the duty of the CBI to return the money of depositors cheated in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund fraud.
Speaking to the mediapersons, Roy said though it was necessary that the poor depositors’ savings that had been lost in the Saradha chit fund scam should be returned at the earliest, yet the duty to return that money did not lie with any Investigating Agency that was probing the case.
Addressing rallies Banerjee had said, “it is good that the investigation has passed into the hands of the CBI. We are happy to transfer the case from the SIT to the CBI, but while doing so we will also demand that the CBI returns the stolen money of the depositors. It is their duty now.”
Refusing to tow the Chief Minister’s line that the Central Agency was acting as a puppet in the hands of the BJP-led NDA Government, he said, “CBI has come to investigate the scam where lakhs of people have lost their deposits and it is the duty of each and every law abiding citizen to respond to its summons and cooperate in the investigations.”
Roy’s statement came on a day when the CBI raided the Rose valley chit fund group’s headquarters at Salt lake for the second time in three days. They had recovered some crucial evidences, sources said.
The former Railway Minister was reacting to remarks that his party colleague and lok Sabha MP Tapas Paul had also avoiding the confrontationist path with the CBI and towing the line shown by Roy instead.
Instead of following Banerjee’s confrontationist path by lambasting the Centre and the CBI for “trying to victimise the Trinamool Congress and win narrow political mileage”, Roy had not only “cooperated” with his investigators, but also iterated that he would “visit the CBI office one hundred times if asked to do so.”