Assam singer grilled over Saradha links

KOLKATA: Two days after the investigating agency searched his residence in Guwahati, CBI sleuths summoned Assam singer Sadanand Gogoi to its Kolkata office and questioned him for several hours on Saturday.
The immediate reference for questioning him was his alleged acceptance of Rs 4 lakh from Saradha for a commercial that he made for the chit-fund group.
His questioning assumes greater importance since the CBI had summoned a businessman from Assam, Rajesh Bajaj, for the third consecutive day. Sources said Gogoi was questioned in his presence.
Even as the Saradha scam is sending ripples across political circles in Kolkata, Assam politics is feeling the heat of the country-wide CBI investigations.
CBI confirmed that they are thinking of summoning two Assam politicians and a steel and media tycoon residing in the northeast soon. Bajaj was instrumental in augmenting the deal between Saradha boss Sudipta Sen and Congress MP Matang Singh. The deal, though, is under CBI scanner and had led to searches at Singh’s residence earlier.
CBI officials said that Gogoi had close relations with a former Assam state minister and a CEO of Saradha Realty. This CEO was earlier working as a HR executive in a private insurance firm.
A former senior cop of the state, whose house was searched earlier, too kept close ties with Sen through him when he was Assam Publication Board secretary.
Gogoi was found to have called both this CEO and the Saradha boss several times on STD lines, said sources. It is in this regard that CBI officials questioned him.
According to CBI sources, this CEO would come to Guwahati every month and stay for around three days at a top hotel in the Ulubari area.
During his stay he would always get in touch with these three men. Every month the CEO would collect Rs 18 lakh from the office of Saradha Realty India Ltd in Guwahati but nobody really knew who this money was given to.
Earlier, a ‘Sakalbela’ editor had claimed that Sen and the CEO’s links with the cop and Gogoi were exposed after their phone call records were checked.
“Phone call records show that the CEO (phone no. 9163337***) and Sen (phone no. 9903069***) had made frequent long calls to Gogoi (phone nos. 9435013*** and 9864063***),” the editor had alleged. “A high–level probe will bring everything to light,” he said.
“Gogoi even took Sudipta Sen to Guwahati Town Club one night around 1am to meet Himanta Biswa Sarma. I was waiting outside. The meeting lasted for almost an hour. After the meeting, Sen told me ‘Tum log aaram se kaam karo’ (You continue working comfortably),” the editor had added.
The editor himself, however, is named in an earlier FIR filed at an Assam police station. But the CBI is taking his statements seriously in their probe in Assam.
Sources said that several Saradha employees in Guwahati had claimed that it was on Sadananda Gogoi’s request, that education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma had agreed to inaugurate a biscuit manufacturing factory in Dhubri belonging to the Sarada Group.
“We need to ascertain if these claims have a basis,” said a source.