New Delhi: Strongly pulling up the state government for a “stalemate” in the Saradha case, the Calcutta High Court last week granted bail to the mastermind of the biggest political and economic scam of West Bengal which not just conned thousands of commoners but also had the who’s who of the state involved.
Sudipta Sen, chairman and the managing director of the Saradha Group, is accused of masterminding the inter-state multi-crore scam and was arrested in 2013. He is scheduled to be released from custody a week before West Bengal votes in a new legislature.
ThePrint’s analysis of court records from Barasat to Dakshin Dinajpur shows a pattern—stalled proceedings: charge sheets pending, witnesses not deposing, accused not being produced and crucial documents missing—that raises serious questions about whether meaningful closure is in sight for thousands of investors.
More than a decade after the Saradha scam surfaced, and beyond the court’s bail order, a broader look at the 389 cases against Sen reveals how the case is far from closure. Hundreds of cases continue to wind through courts in West Bengal, marked by slow progress and administrative lapses, a reality underscored by the Calcutta High Court.
Granting bail to Sen, Justices Uday Kumar and Rajarshi Bharadwaj pulled up the police for “candidly” acknowledging the “stalemate” and “procedural morass” caused by the missing record and its inability to reconstruct documents post which the trial would resume.
Since the state has admitted that the prospects of an early trial are “remote and bleak”, and noting the deteriorating health conditions of Sen—in jail for almost 13 years now—that include a recent brain stroke, the court said, “there appears to be a systemic collapse of the trial machinery” in trials in Barasat.
“The state failed to demonstrate any effort to seek production orders, and the trial court similarly failed to exercise its oversight. Where a decade is consumed merely in the supply of papers, the system has failed the mandate of speedy justice… The fact that the system has remained idle without reconstructing these records for years is a substantive barrier that renders the petitioner’s right to a ‘speedy trial’ a dead letter,” the bench said.
Stating that he is “ready to face trial”, Sen petitioned the Calcutta High Court in 2024 after the trial court rejected his bail plea. Lodged in Presidency Correctional Home, Sen stated that he would “cooperate” with the investigation in the ongoing trial pending even if out on bail from the Chief Judicial Magistrate’s Court in Barasat, the only case where he hasn’t got bail yet. Stating that he has been “falsely implicated for no fault of his”, Sen’s plea also said that since there are 27 witnesses, it is unlikely that the trial will conclude soon.
Sen also said that he was never interrogated by the police during the investigation of this particular case. The state’s failure to produce the main accused in the courts for a decade, to supply copies or to preserve the integrity of judicial records became a reason for the High Court to release Sen from jail.
ThePrint’s analysis of this case in the Barasat Court orders show that he has not been produced before the court in this case since 2013.
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The Saradha scam
The Saradha Group, named after Sarada Devi, the spiritual consort of Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, operated in sectors like media, real estate and chit funds via over 200 companies.
Founded in 2006, the Ponzi scheme involved collection of over Rs 20,000 crore from more than 1.7 million investors centered in Bengal but extended to Assam, Odisha, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Tripura. Different investment schemes were launched under the garb of sale of products and services, promising lucrative returns in violation of the provisions of regulatory statutes.
According to the Companies Act of 1956, companies are prohibited from taking money from more than 50 investors at any one time. Secondly, the company needs approval from the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) before raising large quantities of funds. But since none of the guidelines were followed, the SEBI had told the state governments as early as 2010—way before the first formal complaint—about the possibility of a ‘Ponzi scheme’ in the state.
Sitting ministers, Trinamool Congress (TMC) Members of Parliament and leaders, media groups, real estate agents, police officials—the who’s who of West Bengal were alleged to be involved in the case. Actor-turned-TMC leader Satabdi Roy served as Saradha’s brand ambassador, while former TMC MP Kunal Ghosh ran its Rs 988-crore media wing under the Saradha Group.
Bengal police chief Rajeev Kumar—now a Rajya Sabha member from TMC—was heading the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that investigated the scam and was also accused of tampering with the records by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the top court.
Senior leader Srinjoy Bose, Transport Minister Madan Mitra, and Congress leader Matang Singh were also linked to the scam; Mukul Roy and Suvendu Adhikari—TMC leaders who later joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—were named in the investigations.
Himanta Biswa Sarma, now Assam Chief Minister, was accused by Sen of receiving roughly Rs 3 crore in cash and vouchers, leading to his questioning by the CBI in 2015, also the year Sarma shifted from the Congress to the BJP.
The group also had involvement with the government of the day—as part of its corporate social responsibility programme, the Saradha Group donated motorcycles to the Kolkata Police. In 2011, the Mamata Banerjee government used Saradha Group-sponsored ambulances and motorcycles for the Jangalmahal area of West Midnapore.
Moving itself to the rich socio-cultural sphere of Bengal, Saradha Group invested in football rivals and the best-known clubs in Bengal: Mohun Bagan A.C. (Rs 1.8 crore in 2010-11) and East Bengal F.C. (Rs 3.5 crore since 2010).
Boiling point
Before the public and formal complaints, the SEBI first confronted the group regarding its fundraising activities, leading the group to create a complex web of nearly 200 companies to bypass scrutiny in 2009-10.
The first formal complaint which paved the way for hundreds of others was by an insider. Associated with the Saradha Group’s media operations, Arpita Ghosh in April 2013 moved against Sen for the abrupt closure of media outlets and non-payment of salaries to employees.
Another root of this case is a written complaint lodged by Archana Ghosh at Barasat Police Station which led to an FIR against Sen and Kunal Ghosh, a former TMC Rajya Sabha MP and the CEO of the Saradha Media Group.
Soon after, Sen left West Bengal and was arrested from Kashmir in April 2013. Within a year—almost 385 more FIRs were filed in Bengal alone by investors against Sen and others when they realised that their money was gone.
The transfer of some cases to the CBI was on a Supreme Court intervention after allegations of bias and bipartisan behaviour against the police. In May 2014, the Supreme Court via a landmark judgement transferred a handful of cases to the CBI which the West Bengal government strongly opposed.
Emphasizing that the scam had massive inter-state ramifications involving nearly Rs 10,000 crore and over 25 lakh claims from defrauded investors, a Supreme Court bench said that an independent central agency was necessary to restore public confidence, especially given the alleged patronage of influential persons.
The CBI filed its first charge sheet in the court of the Metropolitan Magistrate of Kolkata in October 2014, accusing Sen and Saradha Group executive director Debjani Mukherjee and TMC MP (suspended) Kunal Ghosh of cheating, criminal conspiracy under the Indian Penal Code and the Prize Chit and Money Circulation Schemes (Banning) Act of 1978.
In December 2020, when Sen was lodged in Presidency Jail, he wrote a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying that “there are many influential persons who have taken huge financial advantage” from him and “no action has been taken”.
“The list includes some political leaders of the CPI(M), the BJP, the Congress and the Trinamool Congress. I request the CBI and the state police (to) kindly take necessary action against them,” he wrote.
He also mentioned that the CBI was made aware of it and it is “painful” for him that “those who are talking of high morals have actually cheated poor people”, requesting the agency and state police to investigate the matter properly. This letter-turned-petition before the Calcutta High Court essentially became the case in which Sen got bail last week.
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Trials in limbo
Even though Sen has been granted bail and won’t be held in custody, the actual trials for many of these hundreds of cases are in various stages, with some having reached a “total stalemate” due to missing records or administrative failures almost 15 years down the line.
There are 389 cases in West Bengal alone—77 of which are being probed by the CBI while the other 312 are being probed by the police. The trials of these 389 cases are spread across the district courts of Bengal with many now amalgamated with another based on how the transactions took place.
In the Enforcement Directorate’s case against Sen pending in the City Sessions Court over the course of 146 hearings till 2025, the court records indicate that the accused were still seeking documents from the ED and the court was giving time repeatedly to the counsel for the same.
In Biddhanagar court, 7 cases are pending and in one of these cases, an analysis of the 204 hearings from 2013 to 2025—when the case was last heard—the court is repeatedly ordering the police to conduct statutory verification of documents and notes the absence of accused who are out on bail.
In another case, from 2016 to 2019, the court kept on “requesting” the Additional Superintendent of Police/investigating officer of CBI on the point “whether the CBI intends to file any charge sheet or not in this after their share of investigation”. That report is still awaited by the court.
Another case remained pending as the court kept on asking the CBI counsel to issue the mandatory summons to witnesses to be produced before it for recording their testimony.
One of the cases in the Bidhanagar court was amalgamated with another as the fraud arose from the same transaction—even though the charges were levelled by different people.
In August 2025, Sen and Debjani Mukherjee were acquitted in three cases by Kolkata’s Bankshall court. Even though the judgement did not release them from jail because of other cases, the court said that the police failed to provide “enough evidence to corroborate the charges of fraud and criminal breach of trust” in these specific cases registered in 2013. It also noted that only a small number of the witnesses listed deposed, essentially weakening the state’s case.
In the Barasat case, Sen was last produced in 2013 and since then the trial is held up as there have been no prayers by the police to produce him before the court as well.
A status report submitted by the government before the court in 2025 detailed that the total number of cases registered against Sen in Bengal stood at 389. In those cases, the number of cases prosecuted by the police where Sen has been arrested is 305. The number of cases prosecuted by the police where Sen has been granted bail are 282 and where Sen is yet to obtain bail are 23.
There are 17 cases outside of West Bengal against Sen for which the production warrants are pending for execution. The number of cases where investigation is pending by the CBI stood at three in 2025.
One of the lawyers representing Sen in the high court told ThePrint how many of these cases have not achieved finality because his client couldn’t appoint a lawyer. “Being in jail since 2013, he was not aware of how many cases were pending against him and he had no appropriate defence counsel as well.”
After the 2020 letter to the PM and CM, the High Court ordered a status report, he said, which revealed the number of cases against Sen to him and the world outside.
He also detailed how the CBI amalgamated all the 77 cases under it and filed four Regular Cases (RCs). Even though the first charge sheet has been filed, he said that the CBI is filing supplementary charge sheets in most of the cases.
A lot of dates just got posted to the next one because the accused in jail weren’t produced either physically or via video conferencing, another lawyer representing Sen in the HC said.
For instance, in one of cases going on in the Balurghat district court at Dakshin Dinajpur which is at the stage of evidence examination since the last 13 hearings, the court has ordered the Dum Dum Jail superintendSaradha chief Sudipta Sen has been granted bail by Calcutta High Court after 13 years in custody | X ent to produce Debjani Mukherjee but it hasn’t been complied with. An earlier order also notes her application to be present before the court via video-conferencing, which was allowed.
The court records show that no witnesses have been present in court since 2018. In 2023, Sen sent a letter requesting a legal aid counsel to be provided to him. The court records show that Debjani Mukherjee was last produced in 2017 and “requests” for producing Sen before the Balurghat court remain pending till date.
Even if he faces a case, Sen’s lawyers say that “until and unless they (the police and the CBI) are willing to prosecute and move the trial ahead, why should Sen be in jail?” “Nobody is going to face a trial unless s/he is aware of it—this is the actual reason for delay,” said Sen’s lawyer.
(Edited by Nardeep Singh Dahiya)
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