By Our Correspondent, Bhubaneswar, January 29, 2015 ###

Victims of multi-billion chit fund scam in Odisha are unsure of getting back their hard earned money with the demise of Justice R.K. Patra on Wednesday.

He was probing into the mega scam as the head of  judicial probe panel on chit fund scam. The state government had constituted the body on July 9, 2013.

Justice Patra had launched a concrete database of the cheated investors as there were no government modalities to return the money of the cheated investors.

The government had announced to accept the database as authentic record of the affected depositors and promised to pay their money. The state government had even constituted a Rs 300-crore corpus fund to return the money of the depositors.

Justice Patra was determined to unearth the entire scam and finding ways to return money to the depositors.

Interestingly, the Commission of Inquiry had not been entrusted with such powers in the Terms of Reference (ToR). The Commission was supposed to submit its recommendations to the state government on how to prevent such occurrences in the future. Besides, it was supposed to probe into the  involvement of politicians and influential persons in the mega chit fund scam.

Couple of days prior to his death, Justce Patra had snubbed the state government saying it was not providing him adequate support to expedite the probe process.  Depositors saw in his criticism as a ray of hope of early return of money.

The mega-scam has dented the ‘clean image’ of the government headed by Naveen Patnaik. At least half-a-dozen of BJD leaders, including a Lok Sabha member and an MLA, are currently lodged in jail for their complicity with the chit fund firms.

The Patra Commission had received more than eight lakh affidavits out of which 2, 46, 897 sealed envelopes were yet to be recorded. Besides, 3, 28, 582 affidavits were pending scrutiny and categorisation. Notably, out of these only 2, 02, 166 affidavits have been scrutinised till lately. With the digitisation process yet to take off, the process is likely to get delayed post the demise of Justice Patra.