A middle-aged homemaker who didn’t study beyond school was arrested and produced in court on Thursday as one of the four directors of dud IT firm INFOGEN Global.
Jharna Chandra, the wife of an official of the higher education department, claimed to be unaware that she was on the board of the Sector V company that cheated batches of trainees of their security deposits and salaries.
She said her absconding nephew Anirban Ghosh, the “chief visionary” of INFOGEN, had got her to sign a document when he launched the company in 2005 but didn’t tell her what it was for. “She was conned, just as the trainees were,” said Jharna’s lawyer Anirban Majumdar.
The additional chief judicial magistrate’s court in Salt Lake remanded Jharna in police custody till Tuesday.
Anirban, his wife and colleague Debarchana Mitra and mother Jaya, the fourth board member, flew the coop before the police got cracking. The police raided several locations, including the Ghosh family’s house in Sarisha under South 24-Parganas, throughout Thursday but failed to trace the trio.
Sources said Jaya, supposedly estranged from her husband, was in charge of two NGOs started by Anirban. The police have yet to find out how the family benefited from the NGOs — Pally Sathi in Sarisha and Nari Kalyan Kendra in Kalagacchia, also in South 24-Parganas.
The police remained tightlipped but sources said there was no evidence of Jharna, who is Jaya’s sister and assisted her in both NGOs, being involved in any illegal activity.
A team from Bidhannagar East police station, which is investigating the case on the basis of an FIR filed by the duped trainees of INFOGEN, had stopped Jharna’s husband Basudeb when he was leaving his office in Salt Lake’s Bikash Bhavan on Wednesday.
The team asked the official to take them to his home in Mograhat, South 24-Parganas, so that they could speak to his wife.
Jharna was brought to Bidhannagar around 3.30 in the morning. Her lawyer moved court for bail a few hours later but it was rejected.
“We will file another plea and bring her out. There is no evidence against my client,” Majumdar said after the court’s verdict.
Proof of Anirban’s fraudulent dealings, however, continued to mount. From furniture sellers to laptop suppliers, he and his family allegedly duped everyone they did business with. The owner of Rashmi Building in Sector V, where INFOGEN’s corporate office is located, hasn’t received the monthly rent for several months. Rent for the other offices in Sector I and Sector II has not been paid either.
“I regret the day I agreed to sell laptops to the company,” said a supplier who requested that he be not named.
Trainee Sudipto Manna visited his shut first-floor office in Rashmi Building again on Thursday morning, hoping to hear good news that never came.
“My father mortgaged our house to finance my engineering course and my mother pawned her jewellery to arrange for the surety that I had to pay INFOGEN within two weeks of recruitment. I have lost my job and my parents’ money,” he said.
