Over 600 protesters gathered at Jantar Mantar during the week to protest against the slow pace of action by the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) in the multi-crore Rose Valley chit fund scam.
Protesters accused the ED and SEBI of not acting tough on the perpetrators that unleashed a “financial violence” on poor people who had put in their lives’ savings into the company, with the expectation of attractive returns.
Pradeep Bhattacharya, a protester at Jantar Mantar and a resident of Delhi who has his roots in West Bengal, had invested around Rs 5,00,000 into the Rose Valley chit fund, but has lost all of it. He told The Sunday Guardian, “We have lost all our savings in this. The government is not doing anything much about it. The government and the court should put in place a mechanism to return some of the investors’ money. Some are from very poor families and have lost almost all their savings.”
Besides investors, protesters who gathered from 13 different states also included Rose Valley agents. The agents and their families also expressed their concern about being harassed by investors and over non-payment of dues.