Singer held in Saradha case - Calcutta Telegraph

Sadananda Gogoi in Calcutta on Friday. (PTI)

Calcutta/Guwahati, Sept. 12: Assamese singer Sadananda Gogoi was arrested by the CBI in Calcutta today on charges of “conspiracy and misappropriation of funds” in the Saradha scam.

He will be produced in Alipore court tomorrow, CBI spokesperson Kanchan Prasad said in New Delhi.

Sources said the singer was summoned at the CBI’s Salt Lake office this morning for the fourth time. After almost five hours of grilling, CBI officers found several inconsistencies in his statements and the documents he had submitted. They realised that he was deliberately trying to mislead the CBI by providing fabricated information and that there were several loopholes in his claims. They thus felt the need to take him into custody for detailed interrogation.

The CBI had first summoned Sadananda in August after his name cropped up for allegedly accepting Rs 4 lakh from Saradha for a commercial on Saradha biscuits that he made for the deposit-collecting firm. The CBI had conducted a search at his residence at Sarumotoria in Guwahati on August 28.

There have been allegations that Sadananda acted as a link between Saradha group and politicians and top police officials in the state to protect Saradha’s business interests.

“According to (Saradha chief) Sudipta Sen, he had paid several crores of rupees to ensure political and police patronage for Saradha’s business ventures in Assam and the deal was allegedly facilitated by Sadananda,” a source said.

The singer and filmmaker was close to former Assam health and education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, whose house was also searched by the CBI in connection with the Saradha scam.

CBI insiders said a scan of the details of Sadananda’s call records from his two mobile numbers had revealed that he was frequently in touch with both Sen and the chief executive officer of Saradha Realty, Sudip Ghosh Dastidar, who visited Guwahati every month.

“There are reasons to believe that he is part of a larger conspiracy,” a CBI officer said. “We collected some key documents from his house during the raid. He holds the key to several important leads.”

Sadananda was made the secretary of the Publication Board, Assam, when Sarma was the education minister. He resigned in April last year after his appointment came under severe criticism from different sections of society who raised questions about his eligibility for the post.

Gogoi also ventured into Assamese cinema industry. He directed a feature film, Mone Mor Koina Bisare, which was released last year. Another film, Prothom Prem, is under production.

Dibon Deka, publisher of Sakalbela, a Bengali newspaper of Saradha group, had held a news meet in April last year and accused Sarma, former state director-general of police Shankar Barua and Sadananda of assisting the group’s business ventures in the state.

Deka had alleged that Dastidar, who looked after the company’s businesses in Assam, took the trio’s help in running Saradha Realty, which collected money from depositors under different schemes.

“In case of any problem with the police, Sadananda sorted them out through Barua, the then director-general of police, and in case of an administrative problem through Sarma. When Calcutta-based Dastidar visited Guwahati every month, he used to meet the trio,” Deka alleged at the news meet.

Gogoi, Sarma and Barua had denied Deka’s allegations.

With this arrest, 10 persons have been apprehended by the CBI in connection with the scam, which has its tentacles spread over four states, including Assam, West Bengal and Odisha. This includes the six who were arrested by West Bengal police and taken into custody by the CBI.

A prominent lawyer from Odisha is expected to be questioned by the CBI soon, the sources said.

Sadananda is the fourth person to be arrested by the CBI in Calcutta in connection with the scam. The agency had recently arrested former director-general (armed police) in West Bengal, Rajat Majumdar, for his alleged involvement in the scam. The agency has also arrested East Bengal club official Debabrata Sarkar and businessman Sandhir Agarwal.

The CBI has registered four FIRs against the Saradha Group in Bengal and 44 cases in Odisha.

The Supreme Court had handed over the Saradha scam probe to the CBI and asked the state governments to provide all logistical help to the agency’s teams investigating the matter.

The CBI has formed a special investigation team (SIT), headed by joint director Rajiv Singh, to probe the role of some officials of the Securities Exchange Board of India (SEBI) and the RBI, the sources said.