The Supreme Court on Monday refused to monitor the ongoing CBI investigation into the Saradha chit fund scam in West Bengal.
A two-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi and Justice Sanjiv Khanna did not allow the application filed by some investors that despite the apex court’s 2013 order directing the CBI to probe the chit fund scam, the investigation has not attained finality.
“We are not inclined to set up a monitoring committee to monitor the chit fund scam probe,” the bench said.
Earlier, the apex court in 2013 had transferred the probe into the scam to the CBI.
Saradha Scam happened with the collapse of a Ponzi scheme run by Saradha Group which is an association of over 200 private companies which were believed to be running investment schemes. It collapsed in April 2013 before which the group had collected around 2000 crores from over 1.7 million depositors.
Most of its investors were based in West Bengal. The major accused include two MPs – Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose, former Director General of Police Rajat Majumdar, a top football club official Debabrata Sarkar and Sports and Transport minister, Madan Mitra.
Later the operations of the company halted in 2013 after failing to pay returns.
Earlier on 11 January, The CBI in its sixth Supplementary charge sheet accused Nalini Chidambaram, the wife of former Union finance minister P Chidambaram in connection with Saradha Scam. The Case has been registered alleging she had received ₹1.4 crore from Saradha group of companies, embroiled in a chit fund scam, CBI officials.
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