Odisha chit fund scam: AT Group official sent to 10-day CBI remand

Reported by Santosh Jagdev
Bhubaneswar, Aug 17:

The Special Judicial Magistrate (SJM) court of CBI, Odisha  today allowed the CBI to take Sambit Khuntia, former AT Group director, on a 10-day remand for further interrogation.

The CBI counsel had requested the court to allow the agency to take Khuntia on a 14-day remand.

Khuntia was arrested by a team of CBI yesterday following a raid at his residence located at the Bata Mangala Housing Board colony in Khordha district.

The CBI officials further seized the documents relating to his ownership of 100 acres of land in Khordha mouza, from the Commissionerate Police which had seized them  from the accused earlier.

Continuing its raid on the offices of the AT Group and residences of its officials involved in the multi-crore chit fund scam in Odisha, the CBI teams today searched the ponzi company’s head office located  in Unit-III area under Kharvela Nagar police limits here.

During the search operation, the CBI has seized 31 computers and several important documents from the AT Group office. The house was sealed by CBI’s SIT team yesterday.

The AT Group’s head office functioned here from 2009 to 2012. The company had taken the premises on a monthly rent of Rs 75,000, sources said.

The investigating team have also seized several incriminating documents, hard drives and photographs of some city-based builders and politicians from the office.

There are a number of leads that the CBI team has been able to accesss today. This will help them get more information on the money trail as well as the company’s links with certain prominent persons, sources said.

Two other teams of CBI raided the residences of Binit Lalani, a builder and Jagneswar Babu, leader of Odisha Jana Morcha and former president of Odisha State Cooperative Bank at Patia and Saheed Nagar area respectively, in connection with the chit fund scam, the sources added.