A chit-fund company agent who had consumed poison died on Tuesday in North 24 Parganas district taking the number of agents and depositors who committed suicide to nine after the Saradha Group went bust.
Mrinal Kanti Mondal (42) of Sangrampur village under Basirhat police station an agent of a chit fund company was under severe pressure from depositors who were demanding that he should refund their money, police sources said.
Unable to repay the depositors Mondal consumed poison on Sunday night and died in hospital on Tuesday, the sources added.
On Monday, Jagadish Roy, the 60-year-old father of a chit fund company agent Bidhan Roy committed suicide by hanging at his home in Rishi Bankim Gar colony at Sodepur in North 24 Parganas distressed over his son’s inability to repay money to investors and also after he was publicly humiliated by the depositors.
On May 3, Ranjit Pramanik (18) who had invested heavily in the collapsed Saradha Group had committed suicide by consuming poison at Thakurchawk in the Joynagar area of South 24-Parganas district.
On April 20, 50-year-old Urmila Pramanik, a resident of Baruipur in South 24 Parganas district, who had invested Rs. 30,000 in the Saradha group, had set herself on fire. She succumbed to her injuries the next day in the Chittaranjan Hospital in Kolkata.
Swapan Kumar Biswas (36), a money collection agent of the Saradha group who had deposited Rs. four lakh from his personal savings in the scam-ridden company, was found hanging from the ceiling of his house at Balrampur in Purulia district on April 27.
Three agents of the Saradha group also committed suicide at Mathurapur, Diamond Harbour and Falta in South 24-Parganas district after the company went bust.
The unfolding of the chit fund scandal also drove the owner of such a company, a hotelier, to take his own life in South 24-Parganas district on May 2.
