Guwahati, Sept. 3: KMSS president Akhil Gogoi today questioned how the state BJP could demand that Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi be brought under the purview of the CBI probe into the Saradha scam. He pointed out that party president Siddhartha Bhattacharya had represented the firm’s chief Sudipta Sen in a case against a news channel in the court of Kamrup district judge in 2012.

“Apart from being a lawyer, Bhattacharya is a politician and shouldn’t he have verified the credentials of the deposit-collecting company before representing it in a court of law? He had represented a company which had no permission either from RBI or Sebi to collect deposits from people. He had represented Sen in a defamatory case against a satellite news channel for telecasting a news item about the illegal business being conducted by the company,” Akhil said here today.

“In paragraph 22 and 23 of the petition filed in the court, Bhattacharya had said the business and reputation of the Saradha group had suffered owing to the news item when Sen was doing business honestly and legally. The state BJP president should make his stand clear whether he still considers Sen a honest businessman,” Akhil said.

Hours later, the BJP said the allegation against Bhattacharya was politically motivated and there was nothing wrong for a lawyer to represent Saradha in court.

Party spokesperson Bijon Mahajan (also a lawyer), told the media that if a lawyer gets his fees and if he is not engaged in another profession, then he could represent any organisation or individual in court. Mahajan said he himself had represented Saradha and Rose Valley in court.

Mahajan said based on FIRs filed by depositors, the Bureau of Investigation of Economic Offences (BIEO) and CID registered cases against chit fund companies operating in Assam from 2006 and 2008.

“As a lawyer, I represented Saradha and Rose Valley. The government lawyers informed the court that these companies did not have required licences to carry on business, which means the government was aware about their illegal businesses. Despite this information, the government gave them full protection,” Mahajan said.

Akhil had yesterday raised question on Bhattacharya for representing Saradha in court but Bhattacharya had challenged his statement saying he had represented the firm only as a lawyer.

The KMSS president also demanded that the chief minister be included in the CBI inquiry.

The CBI had searched the residences of two former ministers — Himanta Biswa Sarma and Anjan Dutta — former director general of police Shankar Barua, singer Sadananda Gogoi and AASU president Sankar Prasad Ray recently in connection with its probe into the multi-crore scam that had allegedly taken place in Bengal, Assam and Odisha.

The BJP demanded Dispur to publish a white paper clarifying how many cases have been registered by BIEO and CID against chit fund companies, how many of them have been chargesheeted, how many persons have been arrested and what steps it is taking to return the hard-earned money of the depositors.