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Guwahati, June 6: The Bureau of Investigation (Economic Offences) today picked up two office-bearers of a non-governmental organisation, Society for Child and Women Empowerment, who had allegedly disappeared after collecting crores of rupees from entrepreneurs after promising loans.
A BIEO source said the office-bearers — Amit Kumar alias Amit Kumar Singh and Raja Chandra Kunal — were picked up from the Lokapriya Gopinath Bordoloi International Airport at Borjhar here this morning after receiving information that they would be arriving here on a flight from Calcutta.
Both the accused are currently being interrogated by BIEO sleuths at their office at Srimantapur. “The accused persons have not yet been arrested as their interrogation is going on,” the source said.
On hearing about the development, some of the victims gathered at the BIEO office demanding that the duo must return their deposits.
Amit Kumar, the president of the society, and Raja Chandra Kunal, an executive, are the prime accused in a case number 06/2012 registered at the BIEO police station under Sections 120(B), 406, 409, 420 IPC.
The source said the Society for Child and Women Empowerment, which has a web address www.scwe.org and has its corporate office at 813, 8th Floor, Best Sky Tower, Pitampura, New Delhi 110034, had opened a regional office in Guwahati in 2011 and launched a scheme called Project Rising East.
“Under this project the society promised to provide several lakhs of rupees as grants to small business units of the Northeast. However, each unit applying for the grant had to deposit an amount of Rs 2,534 as processing fee,” he said.
“The units were asked to deposit the processing fee at the society’s two bank accounts — account number 03130210001721 of UCO Bank, New Delhi and account number 0343/19 of HSBC Bank, Connaught Place, New Delhi,” the source added.
According to the FIR lodged at the BIEO police station by some of the victims on May 12, the accused did the vanishing trick after collecting a sum of around Rs 2.5 crore from aspiring entrepreneurs of the region, leaving the entrepreneurs as well as agents of the society in the lurch.
“The duo had even tried to fake their own abduction but could not succeed in their design,” he said.
The source said in the last few years, there had been mushrooming of fake financial institutions in the state, which duped many people of their hard-earned money by promising attractive returns on their investment or loans or residential apartments.
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