New Delhi: In the standoff between the Centre and Mamata Banerjee over a CBI team questioning the Kolkata police commissioner about his alleged role in the Saradha scam, the BJP has accused the West Bengal chief minister of hampering the probe into the multi-state chit fund scam.
Banerjee, in turn, pointed fingers at Himanta Biswa Sarma, the powerful Assam finance minister and BJP’s pointsman in the Northeast.
The Trinamool Congress chief accused the BJP of protecting Sarma, who left the Congress to join the saffron party. On February 3, she that she has “enough evidence with me” against him.
Speaking at the dharna against the Centre’s move in Esplanade, she dared Prime Minister Narendra Modi and BJP president Amit Shah to get Sarma arrested.
Banerjee was referring to a letter written by Sudipto Sen, the key accused in the case, and the founder of the Saradha Group, to the CBI on April 6, 2013. On February 5, she released Sen’s 18-page letter to the media. Sarma is referred to on page 11, where Sen reportedly writes,
“Another high-level person has dramatically cheated me. He is Mr. Hemanta (Himanta) Biswa Sarma. For the last six months, apart from one and a half years, he has taken from us not less than 3 crore, all by cash, and some vouchers have been signed by his office executives by some other means.”
Responding to her accusation in a tweet later in the day, Sarma said, “The frivolous and baseless campaign by Mamata didi against me is very painful. I am not fortunate enough like your police commissioner. I have joined the investigations and offered my full cooperation as a witness. And all this happened much before I joined the BJP.”
He later told reporters in Guwahati, “In fact, I had stayed with the Congress for at least three months after I was called for questioning. Even the CBI told the court that I was just a witness. So Mamata didi trying to drag me and my party in to the Saradha scam is very painful.”
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Accusations and counters aside, here’s a timeline of the Assam leg of the investigation, which included Sarma being summoned by the CBI:
1. On April 22, 2013, taking suo moto cognisance of an open letter written by Akhil Gogoi of Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti, a peasants’ rights body, the Gauhati high court directed the Assam police to expedite investigations into all the chit fund cases. Till then, 222 cases were reportedly registered against 128 chit fund companies, including the Saradha Group, in Assam.
2. On April 23, 2013, the key accused in the Saradha scam, Sudipto Sen, was nabbed in Sonmarg, Kashmir.
3. A day later, then Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi told reporters that he was contemplating handing over some cases related to the Saradha scam to the CBI.
Veteran congress leader Tarun Gogoi. Credit: PTI
4. In May 2013, the Gogoi government asked CBI to take over 15 such cases. According to Gogoi, the CBI, however, took over only two cases.
5. In February 2014, Sudipto Sen was sentenced to a three-year-jail term by a Kolkata court.
6. On May 9, 2014, the Supreme Court asked CBI to take over all the cases of Saradha scam spanning, West Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Tripura.
7. On May 26, 2014, fresh general elections brought the Narendra Modi government to power in Delhi.
8. In July 2014, Sarma fell out with chief minister Gogoi and resigned from the cabinet.
9. In August 2014, the CBI raided Sarma’s house in Guwahati and the office of News Live, an Assamese news channel owned by his wife Riniki Bhuyan Sarma. The then executive editor of the channel, Paragmoni Aditya, told reporters, “The CBI officials examined documents pertaining to ads that Saradha (group) gave us.” As many as 14 locations were raided in Assam then. It included the premises of then Congress minister Anjan Dutta and a biscuit factory set up by the Saradha Group in Dhubri in 2010, inaugurated by Sarma.
10. Filmmaker and singer Sadananda Gogoi’s residence was also raided. Gogoi was seen to be close to Sarma. On September 13, 2014, Gogoi was arrested by CBI.
11. Among the locations raided then was also the Guwahati residence of former state DGP Shankar Barua. He took over in 2009 and retired in 2012. After the raid, Barua was taken to a local SBI branch to check his accounts and the locker. Barely a month later, on September 17, 2014, Barua committed suicide at his residence. According to his family, he was suffering from depression after the CBI raid. Barua was said to be close to singer Sadanand Gogoi.
12. In November 2014, Sarma was grilled by the CBI for eight hours in connection with the multi-core scam in Guwahati. News reports then said he was accused of receiving Rs 20 lakh every month from Sen in order to help him run his business in the state without any hassles. Calling it a political conspiracy, he vowed not to contest the next assembly elections till his name was cleared.
13. The CBI team also interrogated Congress minister Anjan Dutta allegedly for a “business deal” with Sudipto Sen.
14. In December 2014, then Congress president Sonia Gandhi nominated Anjan Dutta as the state Pradesh Congress Committee chief. Dutta, seen as a Gogoi loyalist, died in June 2016 in Delhi.
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15. In January 2015, the Gauhati HC asked the Tarun Gogoi government to hand over all the chit fund cases to the CBI.
16. In February 2015, former minister in the P.V. Narasimha Rao government and a former MP from Assam, Matang Sinh was arrested by CBI in the same case.
17. In August 2015, Sarma joins BJP.
18. In October 2015, the estranged wife of Matang Sinh, journalist-turned media baron in Assam, Manoranjana Singh was arrested by the CBI in the Saradha scam.
19. In September 2016, Sudipto Sen was granted bail by a Kolkata court.
20. In February 2017, Sadananda Gogoi was granted bail.
21. In April 2017, Manoranjana Singh was granted bail.
22. In January 2018, Matang Sinh got bail too.
23. In January 2018, the Supreme Court indicted the CBI for not opposing Sen’s bail plea in 2016 and accused it of “favouring” him.
Since the time Sarma joined the BJP, he has not been summoned by the CBI in the case. What is worth pointing out is that, aside from Sarma, those arrested in the Assam leg of the investigation – Matang Sinh, Sadananda Gogoi, Manoranjana Singh – were also named in the letter Sen wrote to the CBI.
Following Banerjee’s latest accusations, a CBI official involved in the probe of chit funds told the Times of India that a thorough probe hasn’t “yielded any evidence” against Sarma and Mukul Roy, yet another political leader named in Sen’s letter has recently moved to the BJP. Roy was once considered a close party aide of Banerjee.
“We are yet to find any document or electronic evidence to show that Sarma and Roy had been financially benefitted in the Saradha (case). May be there is new evidence in the documents, pen drives, which the West Bengal police are hiding,” a CBI officer told the newspaper. He, however, added that a probe is not over till “a closure report” or a “chargesheet” is filed.