Shrikant Mohta, one of the founders of Bengali film production house Shree Venkatesh Films, was on Thursday arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in connection with the Rose Valley chit fund scam.
Mohta will be taken to Bhubaneswar tonight and produced in a court on Friday, 25 January.
Reports say that the famous producer, whose films have won numerous awards, including National Awards, was interrogated by the CBI at his office in Kasba in Kolkata following which he was detained and taken to the agency’s office in Salt Lake.
Mohta, according to CBI, had huge financial transactions with Saradha group head Sudipto Sen and Rose Valley chief Gautam Kundu.
Kundu is currently behind bars. He had earlier moved the court against SVF for allegedly not honouring a deal his company struck with the production house for films.
According to The Asian Age, the CBI suspects that SVF sold telecast rights for around 70 films to Rose Valley’s TV channel in 2010 for nearly Rs 25 crores.
The Deccan Herald reports that the CBI sent notice to him several times but he did not appear before the agency.
In spite of repeated summons, Mohta appeared made himself available for questioning only once. The CBI officials then decided to go to the office of the producer themselves. He couldn’t give any cogent answers.
“Today when we interrogated Mohta at his office we found several inconsistencies in his statement and hence decided to detain him for further interrogation,” a senior CBI official said.
The CBI had last grilled Mohta in August 2018 for two hours and recorded his statement before allowing him to go.