Family let down by trust in govt

TAMAGHNA BANERJEE

Krishnapada Mandal at his Baguiati home on Saturday. Picture by Sanjoy Chattopadhyaya Calcutta, April 20: Deepika Mandal's father had just returned home after two nights in hiding but the 13-year-old was in tears, worrying about what lay ahead. Dad Krishnapada, a rickshaw-puller turned Saradha Group agent in Baguiati, is under intense pressure to immediately return over Rs 7 lakh to depositors who are mostly his neighbours. So he went into hiding, leaving his wife and children to face the investors' fury. Deepika is shocked at the overnight change in adoring "uncles" who have begun calling her father a thief and threatened severe consequences if he fails to return their money. "They used to adore me. Now they say my father has stolen their money and fled. I know my father is not a thief," the Class VI student of Dum Dum Vivekananda Vidyalaya said between sobs to this newspaper at her home in Arjunpur near Baguiati. The Telegraph had this morning called and persuaded Mandal to return home and speak about his experience. Mandal had spent the last two nights at Dum Dum station and mostly kept his phone switched off. "We were told that Trinamul MPs and MLAs were associated with the group and, therefore, nothing could happen to our company. How would I have known that the company would suddenly shut down, dumping the entire liability on me?" Mandal said at his rented, one-room home. "I'm a poor man; how can I return so much money?" More than 150 people in the neighbourhood — mostly local rickshaw-pullers and small-time traders — had placed their faith in Saradha not just because they trusted Mandal but because they believed that the firm had the ruling party's backing. "What bigger guarantee could there be?" Mandal asked. "We were shown the chief minister's pictures with the owner (chairman and managing director Sudipto Sen) and told the government was behind the schemes. A Trinamul MP (Rajya Sabha member Kunal Ghosh) was the (former) CEO, and we all saw on TV how close the party was to the promoters." The constant threats from investors had turned the last two days into a nightmare for Mandal's wife Saraswati and their two children. "I was extremely scared," Saraswati said. "I was too afraid to send the children to school and kept the door locked. My husband would call once or twice a day but would not reveal his hideout even to me." The Mandals' elder son Dipendu was at school today to take his Class IX exams. The family had moved to Calcutta from Dighalgram in Nadia 13 years ago. Mandal pulled rickshaws for the first 11 years before turning a Saradha agent in 2011. "We thought our days of struggle had ended. But now I may have to commit suicide to escape shame in front of my children," Mandal said. As the news of his return spread through the locality, several investors again gathered outside his home with their documents, seeking immediate payback. Some wanted payment for deposits that have matured; some were looking for premature withdrawals. "My 15-month recurring deposit has already matured but the cheque for Rs 26,250 I was given has bounced," said Gopal Mondal, another rickshaw-puller. "I need the money urgently but I don't know how to get it back. The agent has to arrange the money somehow." Another investor, Harekrishna Biswas, said: "We were shown pictures of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and several other party leaders attending programmes with Saradha officials. We thought it would be wiser to invest money with Saradha than with other companies. If it was a fraudulent company, why did the government stand by it for so many years?" Biswas said he had invested Rs 1 lakh for a seven-year term on the assurance that his money would grow four-fold. http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130421/jsp/frontpage/story_16809929.jsp#.UXPs8aKBlA0