Police seize bikes with red beacons and hooters from Saradha office

Police Saturday raided the headquarters of the chit fund-aided Saradha Group that has gone bust and seized six motorcycles with red beacons and hooters allegedly used by the company's officials to carry money at night.

The bikes were found in a garage of the office, police sources said.

Meanwhile, police personnel from Joynagar in South 24 Parganas district quizzed arrested Saradha group promoter Sudipta Sen and his close aide Debjani Mukherjee in connection with a cheating case filed against them by some depositors.

The interrogators from the Bidhannagar Commissionerate were grilling Sen and Mukherjee to asecertain the total value of the property of the Group companies and Sen.

"They are trying to find where the money has been stashed and how it can be recovered. They also need to find the employees who handled the money, and the relevant papers and other documents," said a source.

A couple of days back the sleuths had summoned for questioning a former official of the Reserve Bank of India who during his days with the apex bank is said to have given some undue facilities to Sen.

A police source said names of some officers of Securities and Exchange Board of India, Income Tax department, banks, and other central and state government agencies have cropped up following Sen's interrogation. "Some of them have already been questioned. We are tallying their replies with the information given by Sen".

Sleuths have also stumbled on 40 acres of land owned by Sen in Shimla.

Sen, Mukherjeee and another senior official of the Group were arrested April 23 from Sonmarg in Jammu and Kashmir, days after the Group collapsed, unable to repay lakhs of depositors - most of them poor people from villages and small towns - who had parked their hard earned money with its companies, lured by promise of huge returns.

Already, a number of and depositors of Saradha and similar chit fund companies have committed suicide, while offices of a large number of such dubious concerns operating in the state have been attacked.

Even on Saturday, an office of a chit fund company was ransacked by depositors at Pandabeshwar of Hooghly district for allegedly cheating and siphoning of funds.