Bhucho Cong MLA, 6 others booked in chit fund scam

BATHINDA:CONGRESS MLA from the Bhucho constituency, Pritam Singh Kotbhai, and six others have been booked for a chit fund scam on the complaint of an Uttarakhand woman.

In the case registered at Rudrapur in Shaheed Udham Singh Nagar district of Uttarakhand, the complainant, Armana Beghum, said the accused took money from her and more than 300 other people assuring them huge returns but never paid back.

The other accused are Amarjit Singh Cheema, Gurdip Singh, Yashpal and Anil alias Rattan, all from Bathinda, and Habib Ahmed and his wife Firdaus Jahan of Rudrapur.

As per the FIR, the accused had sought investments in the firms, GCA Marketing Pvt Ltd, and Fauna, which had offices in Rudrapur. “When the investors did not get any returns within the stipulated period mentioned in the scheme, we approached the accused who refused to return our money,” the woman said.

“The fraud runs into several crores. Pritam Singh used to hold meetings with investors convincing them to invest in these firms. I also attended one of the meetings he addressed. I had invested ₹20 lakh in the firms in several installments since 2010,” Armana told HT on phone from Rudrapur.

“Lodging an FIR has been a struggle for us. We were supposed to get the return in the mid2016 as per the scheme,” she said.

Rudrapur SHO Kamlesh Bhatt told HT on phone, “The matter is under investigation. We are in the process of collecting evidence from the complainants. A police team visited the offices of these companies but they do not exist there anymore.”