West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday announced that compensation will be handed over to 1,000 duped investors, who had made investments in the deposit-seeking companies of the scam-tainted Saradha Group, on September 30.
“The State government would try to cover another one lakh depositors before next month’s Durga Puja and make efforts to reimburse another three to four lakh after Diwali,” she told journalists after an administrative meeting at Jhargram in the State’s Paschim Medinipur district.
Ms. Banerjee had said earlier that about 16 lakh people had applied to the Justice (Retd.) Shyamal Sen inquiry commission for compensation and the State government would compensate them after verifying their claims.
“We are starting the process before Durga Puja. On September 30 we will hand over some amount to 1000 people at the Khudiram Anushilan Kendra [in Kolkata],” she said.
The scam, in which lakhs of depositors were duped, came to the fore in April. Some of those duped even reportedly committed suicide, after which the Chief Minsiter announced the setting up a corpus of Rs. 500 crore.
Members of the inquiry commission who questioned Sudipta Sen, the chairman and the managing director of the Saradha Group, last week said that the compensation money would be arranged from the corpus along with proceeds from Mr. Sen and his company’s properties.
The inquiry commission has said that deposits maturing in 2013, and those valuing up to Rs. 1,000, are the priority. The State government will only compensate the principal amount invested by a depositor.
