Around 200 investors of erstwhile Golden Forest India Ltd, a national non-banking finance company that suddenly closed its shops in the steel city as well as other parts of the country in 2000, staged a dharna in front of the deputy commissioner's office in Jamshedpur on Monday, demanding their hard-earned money back.
Agitating with placards under the banner of Golden Forest Investors' Manch, the duped customers urged the East Singhbhum administrator to take necessary steps to ensure that thousands of gullible people, who lost the savings of their life in the 15-year-old chit fund scam, get justice.
The protesters, mostly senior citizens, who gathered at the district collectorate around 11am, demonstrated and shouted slogans for more than three hours. Later, a delegation, led by Mach president D. Mukhi, met deputy commissioner Amitabh Kaushal and handed him a memorandum, highlighting their grievances.
According to the protesters, the non-banking finance company, which had its head office in Chandigarh, stopped operations in 2000 and shut down all its marketing and branch offices spread across the country without returning the money to its investors.
According to Mukhi, Jamshedpur alone has about 25,000 investors who had deposited about Rs 70 crore in the firm. And there are more than 50,000 investors in Jharkhand while the all-India figure is around 2 crore.
A former member of National Investors' Forum claimed that the total assets of the company now stood at Rs 5,000 crore while its liabilities had been estimated to be around Rs 950 crore.
In 2004, the Supreme Court had offered a lifeline to the investors by setting up a committee to take charge of the assets and scrutinise the investors' claims. Following which advertisements were published in newspapers, requesting the investors to register their claims.
Senior functionary of the Manch S. Mukherjee said many investors had deposited their original certificates of the claims but none of them got money back.
"It's a pretty old case and its between the investors and the NBFC. Let me see what I can do in this regard," Kaushal later told The Telegraph.
