One person has been arrested in the fraud case against an IT company,three days after the trainees of the company registered a complaint with the Bidhannagar (East) police station. Jharna Chandra,one of the directors of the company,was arrested by the police on Thursday morning from her residence in Mograhat. Days after being cheated by an IT company situated right in the heart of the IT hub of Kolkata,more than 300 students now feel that all the authorities concerned are not taking any concrete steps. The latest group to join the solidarity parade is The Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). In the evening,the West Bengal Information Technology Services Association (WBITSA),backed by the CITU,reached the office premises to show solidarity with the students. There is no immediate solution but we have to take care so that such an incident is not repeated. Also,the police will need to ensure that the accused are arrested at the earliest. We are concerned about the students. That is why the IT minister intervened, said Somnath Bhattcharya,secretary of WBITSA. State IT Minister Debesh Das met some of the trainees at Webel Bhavan in Salt Lake on Wednesday evening to assure them of justice but said he had no instant solution. My sympathies are with them. But this is not a labour problem. Its a fraud and the police need to follow it up. On our part we have asked the police to take whatever action is necessary. If the companies can do a background check on the recruits,the latter should also do a check on the companies before they join them, the minister told The Indian Express. Earlier this week,the trainees hired by the company realised that it had shut down all of a sudden after taking Rs 50,000 as deposit money from them. When we tried to lodge a complaint in the Bidhannagar (east) police station,they did not co-operate with us initially, said Sanjay Patra,a trainee. The trainees,as a last resort,also tried to get in touch with their respective engineering colleges and some job consultants who had helped them get the job. We were told that once we were given a job,the responsibility of the college or the job consultant was over, says Patra. On Wednesday evening,Prasenjit Roy,whose Dzire Communication had supposedly taken over this company in December,was escorted to Bidhannagar (east) police station along with his colleague Abin Bhattacharya for interrogation. Roy claimed his company had agreed to run the IT company on the condition that Rs 40 lakh would be deposited in its account by the end of January. The money never came,which is why the salary cheques that Roy had given the trainees bounced, a Bidhannagar police station official said. The dues of the company were so high that the telephone was disconnected and even the coffee-vending machine was seized, said a student. How can a fraud company be functioning in the heart of sector V? There are more such companies functioning in Salt Lake and yet there is no crackdown on them, said a student.
