Nov. 1: The CID has called the management of Duncans Industries Ltd, which owns 14 tea gardens in the Dooars and Darjeeling, to Bhavani Bhavan on Monday in connection with a cheating case at a time the company has allegedly been irregular in paying wages to workers.

The CID has got charge of the case, related to alleged non-payment of PF dues to workers in a Darjeeling garden, when chief minister Mamata Banerjee is touring north Bengal and also when 12 labourers and their kin - including two today - have died since last month in the Bagrakote tea estate, a garden owned by the Duncans Goenka Group in Jalpaiguri.

Duncans Industries Ltd (DIL), the tea company, is part of the Duncans Goenka Group, whose chairman is G.P. Goenka.

This paper tried to contact G.P. Goenka and his son Srivardhan, who is in the senior management of the company, for a reaction on the CID summons. The telephones of both were switched off.

Tea union leaders in north Bengal have said repeatedly that the group had not paid workers' wages regularly since April and this was the reason for the deaths as many of the labourers were malnourished.

Minister Gautam Deb last week refuted the charge, saying the deaths were because of various health problems, not for want of food.

A Duncans Goenka Group representative, who did not wish to be named, accepted that wage payment had been irregular, but added: "We are clearing dues as fast as we can."

The case the CID has got pertains to the Rungli Rungliot tea garden in Darjeeling.

Government sources said the government's haste in handing over the probe to the CID betrayed its worries over the workers' deaths. "The chief minister will address a rally in Cooch Behar tomorrow and the government had to act fast so she could speak of the state's intervention in this case," said an official of the home department.

A CID source said: "Even if the case is big, the district unit of the CID usually first probes and then sends a report to the headquarters. This time it is different."

According to sources in Darjeeling police, a case was lodged at Runglee Rungliot police station on October 17 against G.P. Goenka, his son Srivardhan and seven others by an enforcement officer of the Provident Fund office in Siliguri.

The 14 gardens of the group in the Dooars and the Darjeeling hills employ around 25,000 workers. In all the gardens, workers have alleged irregular wages, rations and other dues.

Additional reporting by our business bureau