dna edit: Let the truth emerge

It was a last-ditch attempt by Trinamool Congress’s suspended Rajya Sabha MP Kunal Ghosh as he exploded a bomb on Facebook, hours after his arrest for his alleged involvement in the Saradha chit fund scam. He dragged a few important names of TMC, including Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, party general secretary Mukul Roy and state sports minister Madan Mitra in connection with the scam.

Ghosh was heading Saradha’s media wing, which included several newspapers and television channels, and brazenly exploited the machinery as mouthpiece for his party, before the company folded up virtually overnight.

The group, one of several chit-fund companies which had thrived under the TMC’s rule, cheated about 18 lakh people — mostly the poor and the middle class, gullible enough to put their money in the company’s fraudulent schemes in the hope of making quick financial gains.

With Saradha’s proprietor Sudipta Sen behind bars, it was only a matter of time before the law caught up with Ghosh. Mamata, who was earlier vocal in her defence of the MP, had gradually distanced herself from her former trusted aide. Ghosh sensed his impending doom — evident in his criticism of the party, and his demand for the case to be handed over to the CBI.

Interestingly, a couple of days after his arrest, Sen, too, had asked for a CBI probe, later retracting his statement in favour of a CID investigation.

Ghosh’s reluctance to be made a scapegoat was increasingly evident in his eagerness to cooperate with the Delhi-based Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO), which had grilled him for several hours, days before his arrest.           

One is tempted to believe that there is some truth in Ghosh’s outburst. It must be borne in mind that the TMC’s alleged association with the tainted Saradha Group was under the scanner long ago — Ghosh’s name-dropping has only strengthened that suspicion. For one, it was impossible for Mamata and her party to not know that most people who had invested in Saradha’s schemes had done so because Sen had been flaunting the ruling party’s association with his company.
Besides Ghosh, TMC MP Satabdi Roy was also serving as Saradha’s brand ambassador. Other TMC leaders, too, used to show up at the company’s various functions.         

Worried about the consequences of such a scam,  months before the panchayat elections, the Chief Minister in a controversial move had announced compensation for the victims. She had planned to generate the money by increasing taxes on tobacco products.

But now the situation is different. With most of Bengal under her grip, including the grassroots, and the opposition reduced to a marginal presence, Mamata must use this opportunity to clear her name from this controversy by ordering an impartial probe into the scam. If she is truly bent on keeping TMC corruption-free, as she has often claimed, then she ought to expel party functionaries who had benefitted from Saradha’s windfall. If TMC has nothing to hide, then investigations into Ghosh’s role should be free of political influences.

Now is the time for Mamata to show her crusading zeal against corruption.