Rose Valley chit fund scam: Investors vandalise Kolkata-based group's property over slow probe

Kolkata: Over a hundred investors in the scam-tainted Rose valley Group’s ponzi schemes on Thursday vandalised a premier property of the company protesting against non-refund of their deposits and the tardy pace of investigation by the central agencies. The angry investors gathered before a hotel run by the group in south Kolkata’s Minto Park and went berserk after the hotel authorities went back from their commitment to talk to them on payments, police said. [caption id=“attachment_734427” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational image. IBNLive. [/caption] The investors forcibly entered the hotel, vandalised its cafeteria and reception room, broke glass panes with stones and ransacked the furniture. According to police, the protesters shouted slogans against the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the Enforcement Directorate (ED) complaining against the delay in their probe into the multi-crore scandal. Police rushed in and detained two of the protesters. The ED has attached assets worth around Rs 1,950 crore of the group in its ongoing probe against the company for money laundering. Group’s sole proprietor and chairman Gautam Kundu, arrested over two years back, is still in judicial custody. The ED investigation revealed that the Rose Valley Group of Companies collected over Rs 17,000 crore from the public throughout India by luring depositors with false promise of high returns or interest on their deposits. In its first charge-sheet, the CBI indicted Kundu and other senior officials of the company for criminal conspiracy (Section 120B of IPC) and cheating (Section 420 of IPC), along with Section 4 and 6 of the Prize Chits Money Circulation Schemes Banning Act Later, the CBI filed a supplementary charge-sheet against three of the accused, including the company chief and two Trinamool Congress MPs Sudip Bandopadhyay and Tapas Pal, who were arrested earlier. Bandyopadhyay, a four-time Lok Sabha member and Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare in former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s cabinet between 2011 and 2012, was under arrest since January 3 when he was taken into custody by the CBI for his alleged links with the Rose Valley scam. He was granted bail in May. Paul, the other Trinamool MP, was arrested on December 30 last year, and still continues to be in jail. Thousands of people were allegedly cheated in West Bengal and Odisha through the ponzi schemes that allegedly promised astronomical returns to its depositors.