No news is good news, when a newspaper Editor is finally arrested for his alleged non-journalistic misdemeanours.
Suman Chattopadhyay, the well-regarded Editor of the Bengali daily newspaper Ei Samay of The Times of India group, was taken into custody yesterday for his alleged involvement in the chit fund scam.
And….
And there is not a line about the arrest in Ei Samay or the Calcutta edition of The Times of India.
No word in Ananda Bazaar Patrika.
No word in Bartaman.
No word in Bartaman.
No word in Aaj Kal.
The journalist, a long time employee of Ananda Bazaar Patrika before he jumped ship, also gets the benefit of the doubt from his former employer.
A three-para news item in The Telegraph, owned by the ABP group, does not name Chattopadhyay or his current port of call.
No word in The Statesman, either.
Only The Indian Express, Delhi, gives the arrest some play.
Chhattopadhyay, according to a PTI report, had been repeatedly questioned for four years.
Press Trust of India
“It is alleged that he had allegedly taken “unsecured loans” from three “chit fund companies”, including Saradha Group, and laundered it through two of his publishing companies, a Bengali daily and a Bengali magazine.”
“The allegation against him was that after taking a loan of Rs 50 million from Saradha Group of companies, he borrowed money from two other chit fund groups to return the money.
“He has been booked for alleged money laundering and round tripping of funds which entails creating bogus companies and routing illegal money using multiple transactions across Indian shores.”
Chhattopadhyay is the second prominent Bengali journalist to be arrested in the multi-state chit fund scam that provided the backdrop to the 2011 assembly election that installed Mamata Banerjee in power.
Kunal Ghosh, the journalist-CEO of Channel 10 and the newspaper Kalom, owned by the infamous Saradha group, was one of the earliest to the picked up. He was released recently.
The chit fund scam dates back to 2009-10. Ei Samay was launched in 2012.
Photograph: courtesy Lokmat
Also read: How Bengal’s chit fund crooks exposed the media
2,450 journos lost jobs in meltdown of Bengali papers, TV channels
IJR 