ED gets custody of wife, son of Saradha scam accused

Rejecting their bail pleas in connection with the multi-crore Saradha scam, a city court on Thursday granted the Enforcement Directorate (ED) five-day custody of the wife and son of Sudipta Sen, an accused under the Money Laundering Act in the case.

Sessions Court chief Judge Mohd Mumtaz Khan granted the ED custody till April 22, based on a plea seeking their questioning to locate the huge sums of money Sen accumulated through Ponzi schemes.

The ED’s counsel Abhijit Bhadra submitted before the court that thousands of crores of rupees were collected from the market through the schemes. The money was then transferred to various accounts, including those of his wife Piyali and son Shubhojit, apart from its use to purchase benami properties, the counsel claimed. He prayed for the custody of Sen’s wife and son to ascertain where the huge amount of money was, as well as to question them about benami properties.

Counsels for Piyali and Shubhojit prayed for bail, claiming that the duo was wrongly implicated in the case and did not have involvement in siphoning off money.

Hearing both the parties, the judge rejected their bail prayers and sent them to custody.

Sudipta Sen was arrested from Kashmir in April last year and has been in the custody of West Bengal Police ever since.