Intensifying its crackdown on chit fund fraudsters, the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Odisha arrested the prime accused in a chit fund scam for alleged involvement in defrauding the investors to the tune of Rs 15 crore.

Tapan Kumar Samanta, director of Mass Infra Reality Limited and Human Welfare Credit & Thrift Co-operative Society Limited, was arrested from Naskar Road, Narendrapur in Kolkata, West Bengal. He was produced before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate, Baruipur, South 24 Pargana (South), Kolkata yesterday.

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After the court allowed transit remand, the arrested accused is being produced today in the Odisha Protection of Interests of Depositors (OPID) court in Balasore.

The accused conniving with other personnel of the bogus money circulation companies had duped several investors on the pretext of returning a high rate of interest on their deposits under various attractive schemes. The amount defrauded by Samanta and others ran into more than Rs 15 crore.

“Investigation revealed that M/s Mass Infra Realty Ltd. is registered with Registrar of Companies, Kolkata during September, 2010 under the Companies Act, 1956 having its registered office under Barasat Police Station, 24 Parganas in West Bengal”, the EOW said in a statement.

Subsequently, during the year-2012, the company changed its name to Human Welfare Credit & Thrift Co-operative Society Ltd. registered under Multi State Cooperative Societies Act, 2012 having its registered office in Laxmi Nagar, New Delhi.

The company represented through the Managing Director and other Directors including the arrested accused had allured the general public with false promise of returning high rate of interest on deposits under different schemes of the company and unauthorisedly collected an amount of about 15 crores from several investors and later absconded after closing their offices, it added.

The Managing Director of the company Pratap Kumar Biswal was earlier last year arrested by EOW and he is still in judicial custody. Investigation of the case is continuing and search is to arrest others involved in the chit fund scam, EOW concluded.