Jail term for chit fund company MD, 4 directors

The CBI court here sentenced the managing director of Real Tulip India Ltd and Real Tulip Industries Ltd, Maloy Kumar Guha, to four years of rigorous imprisonment in a chit fund case today.
Special judge PK Mishra also sentenced four directors of Real Tulip India Ltd -- Tirtha Halder, Malay Halder, Dipankar Ghosh and Prosenjit Sil -- to three years of rigorous imprisonment in the case.
All the five, who were convicted yesterday, were also slapped with fines of Rs 15,000 each.
The judge also ordered Real Tulip India Ltd and Real Tulip Industries Ltd to pay a compensation of Rs 30 crore and Rs 7 crore respectively, which would be given to the depositors as per the procedure laid down by law.

The CBI had registered a case against Real Tulip India Ltd and others on June 5, 2014 on the Supreme Court's direction of May 9, 2014 and took over the investigation on an FIR registered at a Malkangiri police station relating to the chit fund scam in Odisha.
It was alleged that the complainant and others were cheated of lakhs of rupees by the MD and directors of Real Tulip India Ltd after enticing them to deposit money in the company with promises of high returns.

The CBI probe revealed that the accused had collected about Rs 37.12 crore from the public and returned only Rs 7.26 crore to some of the investors. The rest of the depositors' money -- about Rs 29.86 crore -- was misappropriated by the accused.

The CBI had arrested the five accused on December 6, 2016 and the chargesheet in the case was filed on December 30, 2016.
All the accused had pleaded guilty before the court.