Cuttack, June 1: The judicial commission probing into the deposit collection scam will shortly start the process of identifying small investors duped by sham deposit collection companies, head of the commission of inquiry Justice Madan Mohan Das said.

"Data on a substantial number of investors is expected to be available within the next seven to 10 days. With it, the commission will start the process of identification of small investors," Justice Das told The Telegraph.

Justice Das said the state government had assigned the commission the additional job of identifying the small investors, affected by the scam and were eligible for compensation, on the basis of affidavits received.

The commission has manually verified about 7.71 lakh affidavits submitted by investors in the unauthorised collection companies. The creation of a database after digitisation of the affidavits is under way.

Official sources said the commission was expected to identify the "bona fide investors affected by transactions of fraudulent financial establishments or companies and to suggest the modality of payment of compensation, the names of small investors eligible for compensation and the amount of compensation payable from the corpus fund or otherwise".

Justice Das said: "The commission will submit an interim report to the government after identifying in the first phase the investors with genuine records of deposits of Rs 10,000 and below."

The government had facilitated creation of the database with assistance of state information and technology department's Odisha Computer Application Centre.

The commission has asked for creation of a database with details such as names of companies, names of depositors with address, amount deposited, amount received by depositor, balance amount due to be received and so on from the information available from the affidavits.

"The verified affidavits indicate that nearly 180 deposit collection companies had received money from investors across the state," commission secretary Devraj Rout told The Telegraph.

On October 20 last year, the state government had issued a notification on the creation of a corpus fund for protecting the interest of depositors. A month later, the state government announced that Rs 300 crore had been kept aside for the corpus fund for payment of compensation.