CBI books Mizoram official in Ponzi case

Former principal secretary (Industries) in Mizoram government, editor of an online news portal and others were booked by CBI in connection with a four-year-old “Ponzi scheme” case where they are accused of floating a fake company.

The development comes nearly two months after Delhi high court transferred the case to CBI after Delhi police was unable to make any headway in the investigation.

The case pertains to a complaint filed by advocate Sanser Pal Singh, a resident of Burari in Delhi. He had alleged that in 2013, he had come in contact with Devender Verma who introduced him to a person named Manujeet. The advocate was motivated to invest in a firm called Mizoram Direct Marketing Limited, which Devender and Manujeet claimed to be a public entity owned by the government of Mizoram.

To convince Sanser, several meeting were held at various hotels in Delhi so that he could invest ₹25,000. A woman, who identified herself to be the wife of one of the accused as well as an official of the firm presented the so-called proposal.

The accused was also showed online news about the success of the company on a website called Officers Times.

Sanser then invested ₹5,000 and was told to invest the remaning ₹20,000 in 10-15 days. However, Sanser found out that he had been duped. He also found out that the Mizoram Direct Marketing Limited was basically a front organisation, which duped many people by making them invest money. According to FIR, all of the people who met Sanser and convinced him to invest were part of the scam. Sanser even called the so-called editor of the website who recommended that he invest in the company.

Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi criticised the Centre on Thursday over the recent economic indicators that showed the country’s GDP growth to have slowed.

“Falling #GDP. Rising #unemployment. Every other issue is manufactured to distract us from this fundamental failure,” said Gandhi, in a post on Twitter that linked to a news article on Wednesday’s announcement of GDP figures.

Ex-finance minister P Chidamabaram said economy would go down further if corrective steps were not taken. “What the Congress and the opposition have been saying has been proved true. The economy was slowing down in the middle of 2016. Instead of taking corrective measures, the government came up with this extraordinarily foolish measure of demonetisation and that has set back the economy even further,” he said. HTC