india

Updated: Aug 22, 2019 22:02 IST

The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday questioned Bengal’s tourism secretary Atri Bhattacharya in connection with the Saradha ponzi scam.

Bhattacharya, an Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer of the 1989 batch, was quizzed for about three hours at his office at the New Secretariat building in central Kolkata, an official said.

According to a state government official, among other things, Bhattacharya was questioned on the quantum of government advertisements released in newspapers owned by the Saradha group and the payments made against it.

Another official said Bhattacharya was also quizzed about the state government’s decision in May 2013 to pay the salary of employees of Tara TV, a television channel owned by the Saradha group, from the chief minister’s relief fund.

Bhattacharya was the secretary in charge for information and cultural affairs department during that period.

Atri Bhattacharya also held the charge of the home department till recently. He is the first secretary-level bureaucrat to be interrogated in connection with the Rs 2,460-crore ponzi scam.

The Saradha group run by Sudipta Sen, who is in jail since 2013, collapsed that year after collecting money, without regulatory approval, from about 1.7-1.8 million depositors, largely poor and lower-middle-class people. Most of them never got back a single rupee.

The deposits were raised mainly from West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh.

Several politicians including TMC Rajya Sabha MPs Srinjay Bose and Kunal Ghosh along with West Bengal minister Madan Mitra were earlier arrested in connection with the Saradha scam. Many other TMC leaders including Partha Chatterjee, Derek O’ Brien and Satabdi Roy have been questioned by the CBI in matters linked either directly or indirectly with the Saradha scam.