Bhubaneswar/Balasore: May 16: The Odisha government has asked the nationalised banks to open up more branches in rural areas in the wake of sudden rise of fraud cases related to deposit collection companies.

“Once more banks are available in Odisha’s rural pockets, influence of the deposit collection companies’ agents will be curtailed to a great extent. People will also come to know about various deposit schemes. Their money will be safe in the companies,” said finance minister Prasanna Acharya.

Acharya also asked the bankers to put emphasis on the investment in the agriculture sector. In a related development, the crime branch today arrested two employees of the Bengal’s Saradha Realty — Basudev Samal and Bichitrananda Das.

While one of them was the branch manager of the company, the other one helped the company in establishing its unit in Balasore. Both were sent to judicial custody for two weeks following rejection of their bail petitions.

“Samal had been manager of Saradha’s Balasore branch since 2009 to March 13. Das had provided all logistic support to the company and ensured it’s good business in Balasore,” said Rajesh Kumar, deputy inspector general (economic offence wing) of the crime branch.

Kumar said there could be more arrests in connection with the fraud deposit collection firms. “We are trying to obtain information from data stored in the seized hard disks,” he said.

Additional director-general of the crime branch B.K. Sharma said: “We are trying to bring chairman and managing director of the Saradha Reality Sudipta Sen and his close aide Debjani Mukherjee on remand in connection with the probe in Odisha.” Sources said a team had been sent to Bengal in this connection.

In another development, a rally was organised today by the agents and investors of various non-banking financial companies. The agitators staged a demonstration, demanding government intervention in getting back their money.

“There should be a thorough probe into the officials’ clandestine involvement in the money circulation business organised by various fraud deposit collection companies,” said Jayanta Das, who led the agitation.

They also demanded that appropriated steps should be initiated, so that the depositors could get back their money.

The police today raided the office of a number of deposit collection companies in Paradip and Jeypore in Koraput district.