West Bengal Minister Madan Mitra was arrested in the Saradha chit fund scam yesterday, apparently increasing trouble for the government of Mamata Banerjee. The arrest came hours after he had been interrogated by detectives.
He is the first minister and third major leader of West Bengal’s ruling Trinamool Congress to be arrested in the scam, in which hundreds of thousands of people were cheated out of their savings.
Mitra, the Indian state’s transport and sports minister and a senior Trinamool Congress leader, was summoned through an email by the central probe agency on November 15 for questioning.
However, the minister citing health reasons had sought relaxation from questioning. After being discharged from hospital later in November, he called up the Central Bureau of Investigation, expressing his availability.
A large number of policemen and barricades were placed to prevent the media from approaching the minister.
Though reporters threw questions at him, Mitra ignored them and walked inside the CBI building.
Mitra is known to be one of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee’s most trusted aides and a founder member of the party.
He was seen in video clips praising Saradha Group Chairman Sudipta Sen at a meeting of Saradha agents and allegedly enjoyed benefits such as a car,fuel and driver at the company’s expense. He allegedly also extracted donations out of Sudipta Sen for a temple.
Sen, who is behind bars, had told the CBI that Mitra had taken money from him on various occasions and the company’s executive director, Debjani Mukherjee, told the agency that she had seen Mitra at Saradha’s Midland Park office on quite a few occasions.
The CBI also recorded the statement of Bapi Karim, Mitra’s former confidential assistant, in which he alleged that he accompanied the minister to the Midland Park office several times.
One of the most prominent ministers in Mamata Banerjee’s cabinet, the summon to Mitra triggered an extensive tongue-lashing by opposition leaders who said his questioning was a sign of the noose inching towards the top echelons of West Bengal’s ruling party.
Trinamool leaders said they anticipated this “vindictive move” after BJP President Amit Shah’s recent rally in Kolkata. The party has accused the ruling BJP at the Centre of targeting its members after Banerjee had attended a Nehru conference organised by the Congress.
Reacting to the charge, Shah said: “The CBI is doing their work.”
The Saradha Group operated a Ponzi scheme offering massive returns of 40% and more until it collapsed last year, leaving hundreds of thousands of small investors bankrupt in West Bengal and Odisha.
With Mitra’s arrest, three of the four leaders that Mamata had strongly defended at a party meeting last year are now in jail. She had asked rhetorically: “Are they thieves? Am I a thief?”
Trinamool lawmakers Srinjoy Bose and Kunal Ghosh were earlier arrested in the scam. Rajat Majumdar, a former police officer and Trinamool vice-president, was also arrested in August.
In November, the police said Kunal Ghosh had overdosed on sleeping pills in jail. The lawmaker had threatened in court that he would take his own life if the “real beneficiaries” of the chit fund scam were not arrested. He has alleged that top leaders of his party are being shielded.