Cuttack: The Justice Madan Mohan Das Commission is wary of dubious financial companies that had apparently become non-existent after duping small investors.

The commission is identifying such duped investors with genuine records of deposits of Rs 10,000 and below from among the 8.17 lakh affidavits received by it.

However, the commission has not been able to serve notices to a large number of companies because of the lack of proper address, forcing it to publish notices issued to these sham deposit collection companies in local and national newspapers.

The commission has so far issued such notices four times, with the last one being published on Tuesday. In it, show-cause notices have been issued to 210 companies.

"Publication of the notices had become expedient to give them an opportunity of hearing before passing order on the claims made by the investors who had filed affidavits," said commission secretary Devraj Rout. The process involves serving notices to the alleged companies named in the affidavits to show-cause as to why the claims of the investors should not be accepted and why the commission should not consider them as genuine investors.

For this, the panel has been seeking help of the state crime branch's economic offences wing for the addresses of those companies named in the affidavits received from the investors. After receiving the addresses, the commission has been issuing notices by post. But in most cases, the notices were returned because the addresses were either incorrect or the office premises were found locked or non-existent.

"In case of no response after publication of the notices, the commission is left with no option but to issue in accordance with law ex-parte orders identifying the investors involved as genuine and eligible for compensation," Rout said.

The commission published notices on June 3, 2016, February 7, 2017 and August 4, 2017 and in total, issued notices naming 311 financial agencies or establishments after collating information from 3.41 lakh affidavits. Later, in case of no response to notices, the ex-parte orders had been issued identifying the victims as genuine investors.

"The names of all such investors had been included among the 60,941 genuine investors recommended for compensation in the three interim reports submitted by the commission to the government so far," Rout said.

The 311 companies to whom notices were issued on Tuesday have been named in another 2.52 lakh affidavits that were scrutinised in the fifth phase.