The Chit Fund and Cheating

Kunal Ghosh, the former Trinmool Congress MP and one of the prime accused in the Sharada Chit fund case, has said in a video massage that CBI can’t conduct its investigation without arresting West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee. He asked why the poor people of West Bengal should pay the astronomical fee of the Supreme Court advocates? As Mamata is one of the suspected persons involved in the financial scam, she shouldn’t be allowed to influence the judiciary by organising dharna and statewide agitation. For ensuring a free and fair investigation, she should be in CBI custody.

Kunal Ghosh is an accused. Court granted him bail after he spent over 2 years in jail. Kunal was allegedly the key person behind the siphoning off of chit fund money to media industries. After the Singur land acquisition movement, he became close associate of Mamata Banerjee. At that time, he was the Bureau Chief of a Bengali news daily. As stated by Sudipta Sen, CEO of Saradha group, gradually Kunal persuaded him into investing in electronic and print media. Under the leadership of Kunal Ghosh, they left no stone unturned to mobilise public sentiment in favour of Mamata. They also started a daily “Kalam”, which openly supported all communal activities of Islamic fundamentalist outfits. Another TMC strongman, who was also founder president of West Bengal chapter of “SIMI”, became chief Editor of the newspaper. After getting state power, Mamata awarded Kunal with an MP portfolio in Rajya Sabha. Since then, he was the most influential person in TMC before the collapse of Saradha Chit Funds in April, 2013.

A sting operation conducted by a national media has revealed an interesting information. Kunal disclosed the reason why Mamata Banerjee is so protective of Rajeev Kumar by the CBI. Rajeev Kumar is an expert in coercing the opposition with state of the art technological gadgets. By pandering to powerful persons, he tries to bolster his power and status in the police department. During her days in the Opposition, Mamata had accused Rajeev Kumar of tapping the phones of her political rivals in the ruling Left Front. Barely eight years down line, Mamata is staging dharna to protect him from CBI interrogation.

In 2011 Rajkumar Gupta directed a biopsy thriller film No One Killed Jessica. The findings of Rajeev Kumar’s SIT was very similar to story of the film by Rajkumar Gupta. At the end of the day, SIT observed that no one looted the money of Saradha. Interestingly TMC leader Madan Mitra spent 3 crore on his son’s marriage reception at P.C Chandra Garden, Parama Island, Kolkata. He paid the full money in cash. A considerable number of TMC leaders owned castle-like properties in prime locations like behind Gateway Hotels, Harrish Mukherjee road etc. The body language of TMC leaders was found to be abnormally disturbing after the announcement of demonetization in 2016. Senior TMC leaders like Madan Mitra, Kunal Ghosh, Srinjoy Basu and Rajat Majumder had been sent to CBI jail custody over Saradha scam. TMC leaders like Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal were arrested for their involvement in Rose Valley scam. People of West Bengal refuse to believe that “No One Looted Saradha”.

Urmila Pramanik, Baruipur was allegedly the first Saradha investor to commit suicide. She had been admitted to Chittaranjan Medical College and Hospital and declared brought dead on April 21, 2013. Urmila lost Rs 30,000 savings of her lifetimes. Bhola Pramanik, the only son of Urmila is a ricksaw puller. Urmila lost her husband when Bhola was six months old. She had worked as a domestic help, a vegetable seller and a daily wager, brought up the boy and put aside some savings, little by little, over 27 years. Urmila and her son deposited Rs 30,000 in three Saradha schemes, with an expectation to get back Rs 60,000. Bhola would have bought his own rickshaw with the money. Unfortunately, the van rickshaw-puller saw his entire savings go down the drain through the Saradha chit funds and mother died on his own lap.

February 6, 2019 ‘Organiser’ team reached the “Chemical math” (chemical ground) of Madarat gram panchayat at around 9 o’clock in the morning. You have to get a local train for Baruipur from Sealdah railway station. The place is about 3 kilometres away from Baruipur rail station. Once there was a big cotton mill. The Loknath cotton mill is closed for last 7 years. There were subsidiaries of the cotton mill, who used to supply inorganic dies and other chemicals to the mill. Today there is no industry over there, yet local people call the locality a Chemical ground. Small huts are scattered over the meadow. We identified the hut of Bhola Pramanik. Bhola is a cycle-van puller, works under a small construction vendor.

Today, Bhola is known as Bhola Pagla (Bhola the mad). He laughs by himself. He can’t correlate the incidents that happened before him. Till today he doesn’t have his own van rickshaw. Bhola has two girl children. Bhola’s financial condition is getting worse day by day.

Now the question is about the repayment of poor investors money. Most of the investors were vegetable vendors, small shop keepers, and agricultural marginal labourers. Would the opposition leaders who visited Kolkata, like to know about the present condition of Saradha scam victims? The civil society of West Bengal requests the leaders to visit the houses of Bhola Pramanik of Baruipur or Jagdish Ray of Sodepur, North 24 Parganas, They are among the families who had lost their relatives to the deceit of TMC criminals.

They may also visit the house of Jayanta Sarkar, a former Saradha agent from Hoogly district, who had been killed by the investors after the collapse of Saradha. Visit can be arranged within a day, if Smt. MK Kanimozhi of DMK, Tejashwi Yadav or Chandrababu Naidu like to see the condition of Saradha victims.