Sudipta Sen, Chairman and Managing Director of the Saradha Group, which is in the thick of a major collective investment scheme scam, and two of his associates were produced in court here on Thursday and remanded in police custody for 14 days.
Mr. Sen, Debjani Mukherjee, who was also a director of the group, and senior company official Arvind Chauhan were arrested at a resort at Sonamarg in Jammu and Kashmir on Tuesday.
They have been charged with Sections 420 (cheating and dishonesty), 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 506 (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
Amid heavy security, they were brought to the court of the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate of Bidhannagar, A.H.M. Rahman. Outside the court, protests by activists of the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party continued throughout the day.
The overnight shutdown in operations of the companies and media organisations run by the group have triggered a major political furore, particularly as the names of senior Trinamool Congress leaders have been implicated.
Arnab Ghosh, Deputy Commissioner of Bidhannagar Commissionerate, told journalists that six separate complaints were filed against the accused, including two filed by investors, who alleged that they were cheated.
“On April 16, three complaints were filed by representatives of employees of certain print and electronic media who suddenly found that they had lost their jobs and they had not been paid their salaries for months,” Mr. Ghosh said. Two days later, the police received a similar complaint followed by complaints made by two investors, who claimed to have lost Rs. 40,000 and Rs. 1 lakh, which they had invested in Saradha Tour and Travels Pvt. Ltd. and Saradha Realty India Ltd.
He said that during the day, the three were produced in court for the first complaint that was filed against the group.
