Bhopal: The police had recovered Rs 135 crore from chit fund companies and returned the amount to investors in the state in the past few months, said DGP Vivek Johri while talking to Free Press in Bhopal on Tuesday.
Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has instructed the police to register cases against chit fund companies and recover the amounts from them. The police had registered 222 FIRs against such companies.
The DGP said that the police were taking strict action against these companies. Their bank accounts were frozen and the property attachment process had begun. In one case, the property situated in Mumbai had been attached and the remaining properties would be fortified, he said. After the auction, the money would be given back to the investors.
Johri said that, till the month of November, 165 FIRs had been registered by around 17,600 investors. And, in December, 57 cases had been registered by around 18,000 victims of chit fund companies.
It is assumed that around Rs 170 crore had been ripped off by the companies from these investors. Johri added that around Rs 135 crore had been returned to the investors till date. The Sahara company had also returned an amount of Rs 618 crore to investors or depositors, in the past one year. The police are verifying the payment and investors are not coming to register FIRs against the company as they have started getting their money back.
Modus operandi of the chit fund companies
Sources said that chit fund companies had taken away an amount of Rs 15,000 crore from the investors of the state and had run away. Cases have been registered against the chit fund companies at various police stations in the state, but the police have not been able to arrest the main culprits of the cases due to a lack of proper addresses and information.
It has come to light that the chit fund companies are working without registration from the RBI. The companies are registering themselves through the Registrar of Companies and starting to collect amounts from customers, luring them with promises of bright investments.
The companies promise customers that their amount will be doubled in a very short time and they lay a trap in which the customer gets ensnared. The companies appoint local people to collect the amounts and, when the maturity dates come up, the main culprits abscond with the money.
Due to a lack of proper addresses and identity proofs, the police are not able to trace the culprits. The district police have limited resources and also have their daily work burden, so, they often ignore complicated cases related to chit fund frauds.
