Amita being taken to court in Malda on Sunday. Picture by Surajit Roy

Malda, Dec. 2: A woman lawyer of the Malda district court has been arrested for allegedly misappropriating lakhs of rupees, using a fictitious NGO as a front.

Amita Tewari, an empanelled public prosecutor, was arrested from the Jankipuram area in Lucknow last Friday by a police team from Englishbazar.

She was arrested after a promoter here — Asim Kumar Das — lodged a complaint against her. Amita had promised high returns on money invested in her NGO, he had written in the complaint.

Das had further alleged that Amita had taken Rs 27 lakh from him. She had promised Das that she would get him a loan of Rs 4 crore from a foreign agency with which her NGO was linked. Das had paid the entire amount in several instalments, after which Amita left town.

“She was the legal adviser in my real estate business and I had never thought she would run away with the money,” Das said.

The arrested lawyer was produced in the chief judicial magistrate’s court today. The judge rejected the bail plea made by lawyers appearing for the accused and sent her to police custody for three days.

The police had initially asked for a 10-day remand but the lawyers appearing on Amita’s behalf opposed the plea vehemently.

“Is she a Maoist that she should be sent to police remand for so long?” one of them asked. They told the court that all charges against her were false.

Earlier, a host of lawyers, including the secretary of the district bar association, Prabir Jha, and Englishbazar MLA Krishnendu Choudhury promised to stand by Amita in court today.

As news spread that a woman lawyer had been arrested on charges of fraud, a crowd of curious onlookers appeared on the court premises to catch a glimpse of the proceedings.

According to police sources, Amita had set up the fictitious Tirupati Swayambhar Goshthi in 2006. She had allegedly collected over one crore rupees from several people by promising them high returns. The Englishbazar police began investigations after it received more than one complaint about the NGO.

However, soon after the first complaints were filed with the police in May this year, Amita, reportedly slipped out of her house in the Ramkrishnapalli area of town and disappeared. Besides Das, 32 others had filed complaints against Amita, police said. They added that two more persons, one in Burdwan and another in Mathabhanga, Cooch Behar, were also involved in the racket.

The police said Amita was an attractive woman who used her charms to ensnare unsuspecting men. She had transactions with promoters, traders, businessmen and even unemployed youths.

Malda police superintendent Satyajit Bandyopadhyay said the NGO Amita was running was a fictitious one.

“Our officers got a tip-off about her whereabouts and arrested her from Lucknow. We also hope to arrest the other members in the racket very soon,” the police chief said.