West Bengal EOW reduced to an administrative office

EOW has been headless for two years, following the departure of its IPS-director Nirmal Ghosh from the post

Six months after the Saradha scam came to light, the West Bengal government is yet to act on strengthening the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) under the state finance department, set up to focus on curbing financial frauds.

As the number of complaints regarding financial crimes and ponzi schemes rose in the late 90s, after much dilly-dallying, the Left Front government, in power then, had set up EOW. In 2004, then state finance minister Asim Dasgupta had appointed one of the state’s most well-known Indian Police Service (IPS) officers, Narayan Ghosh, as the director of EOW. Ghosh continued to hold the post till 2011.

However, EOW has been headless since about two years, following Ghosh’s departure from the post. Also, officials say of the sanctioned strength of about 30 personnel, only about 12 are running the show, if at all. “Since Narayan Ghosh left office, the EOW under the state finance department has been almost defunct. After the Saradha controversy, there was a lot of talk about reviving it, but things have slowed again,” said a senior state government official.

Once the investigative wing looking into financial frauds and related offences, EOW has now turned into an administrative office, whose only role, it appears, is forwarding the complaints received by it to the state government. “Now, there is no IPS officer as director. We report to Anurag Srivastav, joint secretary, state finance department,” said Maloy Adok, a senior EOW official.

In 2010, much before the infamous chit-fund scam was unearthed in the state, the EOW had flagged this. “Ghosh had written to Sebi (Securities and Exchange Board of India) about irregularities regarding some financial companies, including a Saradha group company. The matter was hardly followed up. Had the matter been taken up at the right time, we could have avoided such a big scam,” said an official.

Last month, a proposal to restore EOW to its earlier active self was taken up at a cabinet meeting in which compensation to those hit by the Saradha fraud was discussed. Officials in the state finance department said it was expected an IPS officer would take charge as EOW director soon.

Repeated attempts to contact state Finance Minister Amit Mitra failed.

As of now, there is hardly any active wing to tackle economic offences in the state. The investigative departments of various police commissionerates are probing the Saradha scam, according to their jurisdictions.

After the Mamata Banerjee government came to power in 2012, the functioning of the state police department was revamped. Currently, there are five commissionerates under the West Bengal Police---Howrah, Bidhannagar, Barrackpore, Asansol-Durgapur and the Siliguri Police commissionerate. Each has an investigative cell that probes, among other things, economic offences.

The state Criminal Investigation Department (CID) also investigates economic offences. “Like any other wing of CID, we are present in all districts of the state. In some districts, we have more than one office. All kinds of economic offences are taken up by us, as and when they are referred to us,” Rajesh Kumar Yadav, senior superintendent of police of the CID’s economic offences cell, told Business Standard. He, however, said this cell wasn’t connected to the EOW under the finance department; CID’s economic offences cell is part of the state police department, under the home ministry.

Investigation into the Saradha scam has been aided by the CID’s economic offences cell, though it is the investigative wing of the Bidhannagar commissionerate that has been at the forefront of the Saradha probe.