The handing over of probe into the Narada sting operation scandal to the Central Bureau of Investigation is the third big blow to chief minister Mamata Banerjee in the past three years. In May 2014, the Supreme Court directed the central agency to investigate Saradha chit fund scam that duped millions of depositors spread across states spanning from Odisha and Jharkhand to Assam and Tripura.
Saradha sank in April 2013 and its chairman Sudipta Sen and executive editor Debjani Mukherjee were arrested from Kashmir. Agitations and a spate of suicides gripped the streets of Kolkata and suburbs and villages of Bengal as dozens of agents and depositors who lost their money ended their lives.
The ruling party of Bengal was not hit any less hard. Though it did not showed in the election results — 2013 rural polls, 2014 Lok Sabha and 2016 Assembly elections — the CBI investigation resulted in the arrest of a few prominent party leaders and interrogation of several others. The most important face to suffer the Saradha blow was Madan Mitra, sports and transport minister and a confidante of chief minister Mamata Banerjee who was arrested on December 12, 2014. He eventually got bail on September 10, 2016 after spending 21 months behind the bars.
Other party functionaries to be jailed were Rajya Sabha MP Srinjoy Bose and vice-president Rajat Majumdar. High profile leaders who were subjected to grilling included party number two Mukul Roy. After the grilling on January 31, 2015, Roy’s relations with Mamata Banerjee suffered.
The second wave of CBI probe into the chit fund scam involving Rose Valley Group has also cost Mamata Banerjee’s party dear. The party’s leader in Lok Sabha Sudip Bandyopadhyay was arrested on January 4 this year and fellow MP Tapas Paul was arrested on December 30 last year. Both are behind bars.
It is speculated that a few more leaders may be summoned by the central agency for interrogation in the Rose Valley scam. Worse, the list is by no means over. Just a couple of days ago, CBI arrested Basudeb Bagchi and Avik Bagchi, father-son duo of Prayag Group who are behind a film city on 12,500 acre in Chandrakona in West Midnapore district. It is rumoured that ruling party leaders may be under the scanner even in this case. While Saradha sunk about Rs 2,500 crore, Rose Valley involved about Rs 17,000 crore, or six times the amount of Saradha.
The cash received by Trinamool leaders in Narada videos — about Rs 5 lakh each — may be a small fraction of that raised by these deposit-raising companies, but it is worse on two counts. It has allowed the people to see leaders accepting cash on TV — a shock that Saradha and Rose Valley could not deliver. Two, the number of faces involved are far more than in the chit fund cases.
