CB apprehends chit fund firm Sai Pragati director

CUTTACK: The Economic Offence Wing (EOW) of Crime Branch (CB) on Saturday arrested Uday Kumar Dalei, director of chit fund company Sai Pragati, which is accused of duping investors of crores of rupees.
Dalei was nabbed from his native village Parjang in Dhenkanal district. He was on the run since 2013 after EOW took up the probe.
Sai Pragati had allegedly defrauded hundreds of depositors of over Rs 25 crore by floating attractive schemes with lucrative returns.Many depositors had registered FIRs against the Sai Pragati functionaries at Capital police station in Bhubaneswar in 2012.
The EOW had earlier arrested managing director of the company Debasish Mohanty and another director Ravishankar Nanda. Both are now out on bail. During the probe, the EOW had seized properties and bank accounts owned by the functionaries of the company.
The seizure list includes 47 acre in prime locations in Bhubaneswar, Khurda and Puri and 14 frozen bank accounts with Rs 2.77 crore. The EOW had sought nod of the state government in July to attach the properties of the company. "Sai Pragati is not among the 44 chit fund companies, which are facing CBI probe on basis of Supreme Court order. We were investigating the case and in search of Dalei for last few months," said CB ADG Bijay Sharma.
Sharma said Dalei's arrest will help them to gather more information about the company's activities and modus operandi in which it duped its investors.
Other directors of the company Ashwini Das, Kamalakant Patnaik, Nirmal Prasad Padhi and Surath Sahoo, arrested by EOW, have also been granted conditional bail by Orissa high court.