CBI arrests wife of Rose Valley group boss

KOLKATA: The CBI on Friday arrested Subhra Kundu, wife of Rose Valley group boss Gautam Kundu and former “employee” of the group’s jewellery business arm Adrija Gold & Diamond, from her South Kolkata home.
The central agency said she was arrested because of her contradictory statements. Subhra was being questioned by both CBI and Enforcement Directorate (ED) since 2014.
The CBI had on Thursday summoned Subhra and asked her to remain at her South Kolkata home on Friday morning. A team of the agency’s officers reached her home at 10am and questioned her for the next three hours.
“She could not answer the questions satisfactorily and there were contradictions in her statement,” a CBI official said. Subhra was later taken to the agency’s CGO Complex office. She will be produced in the Bidhannagar court on Saturday and taken to Odisha, where the case against Rose Valley was registered.
Subhra’s lawyer Biplab Goswami said: “Her name never appeared in the FIR and she has always been cooperating with the agency. She was not even a director of the company.” He added: “She has never left Kolkata in the past two years. She suffers from spinal injury and has an 8-year-old daughter. No one is there to take care of the child.”
Subhra had earlier told investigators that she was an “employee”, and in 2016, she worked as a consultant after taking permission from both CBI and ED. She claimed she was drawing a salary of Rs 75,000.
According to investigators, Subhra was made a “debenture trustee” of Rose Valley Real Estates and Constructions during 2001 and 2008. Documents with National Housing Bank reveal that she was allegedly a 20% stake holder of Rose Valley Housing Development Finance Corporation Ltd.
Her role in the Ponzi case surfaced again in 2017 when she was spotted in a New Delhi hotel with the ED investigation officer probing the Rose Valley case. Kolkata Police started a separate probe into the incident.