Kolkata: Sudipta Sen went missing in early April. He was reportedly incommunicado since the 13th of the month, a few days before cheques issued by his Saradha Group began to bounce. The woman who was reportedly his number two and virtually ran his business empire, Debjani Mukhopadhyay, had vanished in March. They were arrested on Monday night in Kashmir after a cross-country chase over many days, say the West Bengal Police. (
Read: The woman behind Saradha chief)
After Saradha Group offices in West Bengal began to shut down signalling a collapse of Mr Sen's chit fund last week, panicked investors and fund collection agents came out on the streets, lakhs and lakhs of people who had invested their savings in the Saradha fund lured by the promise of abnormally high interest rates.
The West Bengal government ordered his arrest. But where was Mr Sen?
The police now say they got their first tip-off from one of Mr Sen's drivers when he was in Jharkhand with Debjani and another company director, Arvind Singh Chauhan. The police said they followed them to Jharkhand capital, Ranchi, where CCTV from a hotel footage had confirmed that the three people were indeed the Saradha executives on the run. (
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By then, Mr Sen and his associates had moved to western Uttar Pradesh, the police said.
Constantly on the move, they then drove in their SUV to Delhi, hit Uttarakhand through Dehradun, Haridwar and Haldwani, before driving into Kashmir. The police said they first went to Udhampur and then to Sonmarg near Jammu and Kashmir capital Srinagar, where they were arrested from the hotel they had checked into.
The J&K Police said only Arvind Singh Chauhan had signed in the hotel register. But on being confronted, they admitted they were Mr Sen and his associates, the police claimed.
Sudipta Sen and the others were produced in a Ganderbal court today which sent them to four-day transit remand.