Abetment to suicide charge looms on Sen

OUR BUREAU

Sudipta Sen Calcutta, April 30: The Special Investigation Team (SIT) set up by the chief minister has asked district superintendents of police to initiate against Sudipta Sen cases of abetting the suicide of depositors. The SIT, led by director-general of police Naparajit Mukherjee, held a meeting today to discuss the strategy to pin down the Saradha Group chief for masterminding the default crisis that allegedly led five depositors to commit suicide in the districts. "Other than the five victims from parts of south Bengal, there were two attempts to commit suicide. The deceased had deposited their hard-earned money in Sen's company and he cannot shun responsibility," an SIT officer said. "We have asked the district police chiefs to initiate specific cases against Sen." Swapan Kumar Biswas, who had deposited Rs 4 lakh in Sen's company, hanged himself at his home in Purulia's Balarampur on April 27. Urmila Pramanik, a 50-year-old homemaker who had invested Rs 30,000, set herself ablaze at her Baruipur home on April 20. The police are investigating three more cases of suicide. So far, Sen has been booked under IPC Sections 420 (cheating), 406 (breach of trust) and 506 (criminal intimidation). Both cheating and criminal intimidation carry a maximum punishment of seven years in jail. If charged under Section 506 (abetment to suicide), Sen can be jailed for 10 years. Investigators today indicated they were planning to slap more charges on Sen to prepare a watertight case against the alleged brain behind one of the biggest default crises in the state. Sleuths probing the repayment defaults said they had learnt that Sen had used common people's money to pay "power brokers" to buy political and administrative clout. "Some of these people, including retired IPS officers, were on Sen's payroll, drawing lakhs in salaries. We need to know what favours Sen got from them against this," the SIT officer said. The investigators have come to know that Sen used to splurge money on "fixing" influential people in various sectors, such as income tax and the police, so that he could run his business uninterrupted. "Such lobbying to buy political influence and seek favours is a criminal offence in India," the officer said. "Since the money spent on such brokers was that of the common people, we need to interrogate all the beneficiaries to collect evidence against Sen and his aides," he added. Apart from looking into the six complaints lodged against Sen at the Electronic Complex police station in Bidhannagar, the investigators are also falling back on the 18-page letter that Sen purportedly wrote to the CBI and other agencies, naming some of the alleged beneficiaries. The probe is also going to expand to bring under its scanner why Sen had hired a server in Boston to store the data of his company when it could have been done here. "He used to pay $44,000 per month as server rent, an astronomical amount. We have already got in touch with Interpol through the CBI to collect the data stored in that server," said Arnab Ghosh, the detective chief of the Bidhannagar commissionerate. Officers from the Asansol-Durgapur commissionerate came to New Town police station this morning to interrogate Sen and his deputy, Debjani Mukherjee, separately for over three hours. Two arrested accountants of the Saradha Group were also brought to the police station and Sen was examined in front of them. "We have filmed the interrogation session so that Sen cannot retract (from what he said)," another officer said. The officer said that on several occasions, Sen's claims were not matching with the statements of his employees and Debjani. "We will bring Sen and Debjani face to face and interrogate them from later this week," he said. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130501/jsp/bengal/story_16847317.jsp#.UYKTEKKBlA0