Bhubaneswar, Nov. 7: Mancheswar police today arrested a managing director of a fraud deposit collection company for allegedly cheating hundreds of investors of Rs 49 lakh.
The police arrested Rajesh Sahu, 40, managing director of Innovative Groups. A native of Nayagarh district, Sahu was sent to jail last night after his bail plea was rejected. The police said that the group had collected the money from around 3,000 investors promising them 24 per cent interest.
“The group has two offices in Bhubaneswar. While the main office was operating from Saheed Nagar, another branch office was operating from Rasulgarh. The group also had several branch offices in Talcher, Angul, Keonjhar, Jagatsinghpur, Balugaon, Athgarh and Jharkhand. The company had introduced several Ponzi schemes, including monthly investment plan, mini deposit plan and gold plan, promising investors lucrative returns,” said a police officer.
In July, Saheed Nagar police had arrested Prasant Kumar Das, 32, a native of Angul and the chairman-cum-managing director of the company in connection with the fraud. The police had arrested Das after former army personnel Sachidananda Satapathy of Nischintakoili had lodged a complaint. Satapathy had deposited Rs 12 lakh under a scheme introduced by the company in 2011.
A police officer said that though the present case in Mancheswar was about siphoning off public money to the tune of Rs 49 lakh, the exact fraud would be of around Rs 1.5 crore.
In June hundreds of investors of the group had staged a protest in front of the branch office at Rasulgarh demanding repayment of investments. A case in this connection was lodged with at Mancheswar police station on June 29.
According to government estimate, more than 6 lakh investors were duped of more than Rs 4,000 crore between January 2012 and June 2013 by a number of fraudulent money deposit and collection companies. Police and crime branch together have filed 280 cases against 127 such firms and have also arrested more than 300 people in this connection.
CBI arrest
Central Bureau of Investigation today arrested a railway employee at the office of divisional railway manager, Khurda division, for receiving a bribe of Rs 500. CBI arrested Md Jamir Alam, office superintendent of billing section, for receiving bribe from Pardeep Kumar Bal, an assistant locomotive pilot for clearing his bonus bill.
