Suprakash Banerjee in court. (Sanat Kr Sinha)

The managing director of a Salt Lake-based software development firm was arrested on Wednesday night for allegedly duping 80 trainees of Rs 20 lakh.

The trainees — BTech, BCA and MCA degree holders from Bengal and neighbouring states — had made security deposits as mandated by the company management.

Re-Life Digital Solution Pvt Ltd is the fourth IT firm in the city to be accused in the past year of cheating trainees, after Infogen Global, Assurgent Technologies Pvt Ltd and Cyndrake Solutions.

Suprakash Banerjee was arrested in the company’s AJ block office after the trainees and 20 employees lodged a complaint against four senior officials for duping them of their security deposits and not paying their salaries since September.

“Banerjee has been charged with cheating, criminal breach of trust and criminal conspiracy. He was produced in the Salt Lake additional chief judicial magistrate’s court this morning and remanded in police custody for five days. We are searching for the other three officials, who are absconding,” said an officer of Bidhannagar East police station on Thursday.

According to trainees, Banerjee had promised a monthly stipend of Rs 8,000 for the first six months and Rs 15,000 after that.

“We were recruited through campus interviews in end-August. Banerjee had taken a security deposit of Rs 25,000 from me after promising to repay the amount in a year. We were soon asked to go on leave for two months as our office was being shifted from AJC Bose Road to Salt Lake. We rejoined work in November but were not paid our salary,” said a 21-year-old employee with a BCA from the Bengal Institute of Technology.

“The office had only six computers, running on pirated software, and no trainers. We were asked to find clients and develop software,” said another employee, who was appointed as a software developer but asked to do a marketing executive’s job.

The trainees demonstrated outside the office on Wednesday evening after finding out that Banerjee was trying to flee to New York. “We asked him to at least pay back our security deposits but he refused,” said Manauwar Khurssid, another employee who alleged that he was threatened by the company authorities.

Local councillor Tulsi Sinha Roy said the company did not have a trade licence. IT minister Debesh Das promised to probe the matter.