By IANS,
Kolkata: Alleging there were attempts to restrict investigation in the Saradha Group chit fund scam, suspended Trinamool Congress Rajya Sabha member Kunal Ghosh, facing repeated police grilling, Saturday said he is being victimized by the West Bengal government.
“The Saradha issue is a larger issue and not confined only to the media unit. There are many other larger dimensions to the whole scandal… then why it is being confined just only to the media unit,” said Ghosh after his seventh round of grilling by the Bidhannagar Police Commissionerate, which is probing the scandal.
Ghosh who was indicted by Saradha boss Sudipta Sen of complicity in the scam, alleged he was being singled out by the administration.
“It seems they (police) feel I am the only person in the world who knows about Sudipta Sen,” said Ghosh who earlier headed Saradha’s media arm and has repeatedly claimed he was being made a scapegoat and demanded a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe.
Sen has accused Ghosh of blackmailing him and barging into his office with miscreants and extracting a sale deed for a media house which Sen owned.
The journalist-turned MP, who was earlier suspended by the Trinamool for being “anti-party”, has been questioned multiple times by the police, more after his suspension from the ruling party.
Ghosh was also interrogated by the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) in New Delhi Thursday and Friday.
While the CBI has not formally taken over the Saradha probe, other central agencies like the Enforcement Directorate and SFIO as well as market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) are probing the matter.
The Saradha scandal came to light in April. The company closed shop across West Bengal after it failed to pay back the depositors — mainly poor people who, lured by the promise of huge returns, parked their life’s savings with the firm.
As the company went bust, there was a spate of suicides by agents and investors and protests across the state.