Sen sings on eve of CBI hearing

- From Delhi to Calcutta, focus on two affidavits

OUR BUREAU

Calcutta, May 7: Not just the UPA, not just the coal affidavit and not just the Supreme Court. The Trinamul government will also be closely watching developments in Calcutta High Court tomorrow when a CBI affidavit is scheduled to come up.

The high court is expected to consider on Wednesday the CBI affidavit through which the investigating agency formally expressed its willingness to probe the Saradha scandal.

Dramatic revelations capped the eve of the hearing with a police officer claiming that Saradha chief Sudipta Sen had broken down and listed specific figures. The officer quoted Sen as saying he collected Rs 2,100 crore as deposits and repaid Rs 800 crore. Apparently, Rs 560 crore was paid as commission to the agents and Rs 760 crore as salaries and for "lobbying".

If the figures are authentic, they suggest that Sen's liabilities are far higher than the "Rs 300-400 crore" he had mentioned in a purported letter to the CBI.

Legal opinion is divided on the possible outcome in the court. Some feel that an immediate CBI intervention can be averted if the state government manages to convince the court that it had spared no effort in the probe once the depth of the crisis became apparent.

"The CBI has no objection to take over the investigation in case appropriate direction is given to the Bengal government and other concerned states to provide manpower and logistic support and necessary infrastructural facilities," the three-page CBI affidavit said.

A day before the division bench of Chief Justice A.K. Mishra and Justice Jaymalya Bagchi is likely to pronounce its order on the future of the probe, officers of the Bidhannagar commissionerate, which is probing the case, said they were eagerly awaiting the outcome.

While the state government is opposed to handing the case over to the CBI, the Opposition parties have demanded that the central agency probe the case because of the scale of the default crisis, which has gone beyond Bengal's borders.

The Congress government in Assam has already sought a CBI probe into the Saradha default and said that some deposit-collection companies had tried to destablise the administration there.

Throughout Tuesday, senior officers of the Bidhannagar commissionerate took turns interrogating Sudipta Sen, the chairman and managing director of the Saradha Group, and Debjani Mukherjee, the group's executive director, at Newtown police station.

Late in the evening, commissioner Rajeev Kumar quizzed the duo separately before handing them over to Arnab Ghosh, the detective chief of the newly set up commissionerate.

While a section of officers said the rush to interrogate the Saradha chief and his deputy was aimed at gathering as much information as the police could before a possible handover of the case to the CBI, another section said the police were following the normal routine before producing the two in court on Thursday.

"We got vital information from Sen during interrogation in the past few days. If another investigating agency takes the case over, it will have to fall back on all the documents we have gathered," said a senior officer of the investigating team.

Today, officers at the commissionerate were seen arranging documents and files relating to the Saradha case in a new almirah on the first floor of its Salt Lake office.

"We are carrying on with our job. But at the same time, we are also waiting for tomorrow's verdict…. Normally, we have been summoning four to five people for questioning every day. Even today, we asked one person to come for questioning," a senior officer said.

Two PILs — one by advocate Basabi Roy Chowdhury and the other by Sandhyaraani Das and eight other investors in Saradha schemes — were moved before the division bench of the high court on April 25 seeking a CBI probe. The high court directed all parties connected to the case to file affidavits on the petitioners' demands.

"Unless the high court orders a CBI probe or the state government seeks it, the central agency cannot take over the investigation of the case from the Bidhannagar commissionerate. The CBI, however, can interrogate the accused with the permission of the commissionerate," a lawyer said.

Some senior lawyers this newspaper spoke to held divergent opinions on the likely outcome of the case.

"Law and order is a state subject. In this particular case, till now, the Bengal government has shown enough alacrity to prove that its agency is conducting an impartial probe. So it is unlikely that the court will order a CBI probe," a lawyer said. A CBI investigation without state government approval had been ordered into the Nandigram police firing in which 14 people were killed in 2007.

Another lawyer said a CBI probe was inevitable as the crisis had spread to the northeastern states, Jharkhand and Odisha and involved leaders from various political parties. "Given the scale of the scam, only the CBI can investigate the case," a lawyer said.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130508/jsp/frontpage/story_16872936.jsp#.UYpf8KKBlA0