Cuttack, Feb. 6: Identification of small investors duped by sham deposit collection companies would be the priority for the judicial panel probing the scam, newly appointed head of the commission of inquiry Justice Madan Mohan Das said today.

Justice Das, a retired high court judge, who took charge as the commission's head this afternoon, also said the huge number of affidavits should not be cause for the depositors, who had submitted sworn statements, to lose hope.

The commission has received over eight lakh affidavits. Mainly investors in the unauthorised collection companies have submitted these with the hope that the commission would help them getting back their money.

"Segregation of poor (small) investors would not be a problem after creation of the database of the records of the investors from the affidavits received," Justice Das told The Telegraph.

The state government had in November last year announced its decision to make a guideline to return money to the small and genuine investors based on the suggestions of the judicial commission after preparation of the database.

Responding to questions on identification of small investors, Justice Das said: "Investors with genuine records of deposits less than Rs 10,000 will be segregated first. The process will follow in different slabs of deposits. The commission will submit interim reports to the government accordingly."

On October 20 last year, the state government had issued notification on creation of a corpus fund for protecting the interest of the duped depositors. On November 20 last year, finance minister Pradip Amat announced that the state government had kept aside for the corpus fund Rs 300 crore in the supplementary budget for 2014-15.

The state government appointed 62-year-old Justice Das yesterday to carry forward the probe after Justice R.K. Patra, who had been heading the commission, died on January 28.

The government has been facilitating creation of the database with assistance from the state information and technology department's Odisha Computer Application Centre.

Commission secretary Devraj Rout said that over 30,000 affidavits had been digitised. "Data entry of the records of the affidavits has been planned to be taken up after digitisation of one lakh affidavits," Rout said.

"The database will contain details such as name of companies, that of depositors with address, amount deposited, amount received back by depositor, balance amount due to be received and so on from the information available from over eight lakh affidavits," he said.