Cuttack: The Justice Madan Mohan Das Commission, which is identifying small investors duped by dubious financial companies in Odisha, has issued public notices after failing to track 304 dubious companies that have allegedly become non-existent after cheating nearly 84,000 small investors.

Commission secretary Devraj Rout on Monday said issuing public notices was necessary to give them the opportunity of a hearing before passing an order on the claims made by the investors.

"In case of no response to the public notices, the commission will issue ex-parte orders in accordance with law to identify the investors as genuine ones eligible for compensation," Rout said.

The commission is identifying duped small investors with genuine records of deposits of Rs 10,000 or below from 8.17 lakh affidavits.

The process involves serving notices to the companies named in the affidavits to show cause as to why the investors' claims should not be accepted and they not be considered as genuine investors.

For that purpose, the commission had sought help from the Economic Offences Wing of CID-Crime Branch for addresses of the sham companies named in the affidavits.

After receiving the addresses, the commission had issued notices through post. But in most cases, the notices were returned as the addresses were either incorrect or the office premises were found locked or non-existent.

"We have issued public notices to 184 companies as notices by registered post were returned. A separate public notice was also issued to another 125 companies as the Economic Offences Wing had not been able to provide their addresses," Rout said.

The public notices were issued on July 18 and those were published in newspapers on Monday.

The commission has completed scrutiny of 5.93 lakh affidavits and submitted to the state government five interim reports to decide on the entitlement of a total 2,18,354 investors eligible for compensation.

The state government expects Justice Das "to identify the bona fide investors affected by transactions of fraudulent financial establishments/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 took charge of the commission in February 2015 following the death of Justice R.K. Patra.