CBI names 7 accused in 2nd Saradha chargesheet

The CBI filed its second chargesheet in the multicrore Saradha chit fund scam at the Alipore court Monday, booking seven accused. The list includes the four it had arrested earlier, and a suspected “influential person” who was spared from arrest.

Neither suspended TMC Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh nor any other politician was named over the “larger conspiracy” in the chargesheet filed before the additional chief judicial magistrate. Besides Saradha chairman Sudipta Sen and his top aide Debjani Mukherjee, top East Bengal Club official Debabrata Sarkar, businessman Sandhir Agarwal, retired IPS officer and former DGP ( armed police) Rajat Majumdar and Assamese singer- filmmaker Sadananda Gogoi — arrested by the CBI — were booked. All of them have been in judicial custody. The seventh accused is Mr Agarwal’s father Sajjan Agarwal, a Kolkata businessman. In his letter to the CBI before his arrest last year, Mr Sen alleged the father- son duo and Mr Sarkar took around ` 40 crores in three years from him on the pretext of protecting his company from the market regulators’ actions by using influential contacts.

“Sajjan Agarwal claimed he takes ` 20 lakhs per month for managing the Sebi Mumbai office,” Mr Sen wrote. After arresting Sandhir, the CBI summoned his elderly father several times, but he continued to skip this, citing ill- health.