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HUNDREDS of residents of the city's Mir Hazaribagh under the Demra police took to the streets Sunday in support of their demand for the arrest of a person who cheated them under the banner of a cooperative society. The person in question allegedly owned three unknown newspapers and took a huge amount of money from the people promising them land or flat or extremely high rate of return on their deposits. And as a logical conclusion of such episodes, from Sunday morning he just vanished and nobody could trace him even after frantic efforts. These types of organisations are popularly known as 'hai hai (fictitious) Companies'.
Incidents of such fraudulent activities very often hit the newspaper headlines. A similar incident enacted by one 'hundi' Kajal at Kotchandpur in the late nineties had drawn national attention. Hundreds of people were lured to make deposits with a promise of extremely high rate of return and were cheated. But in this case, Kajal could not escape and finally landed in jail. It is generally observed that poor, illiterate and backward sections of the society are the victims of such fraudulent practices. The fraudsters deliberately target these sections of people for they are the most gullible ones lacking in the required capacity to distinguish between 'feasible' and 'absurd' rates of return on any investment. The vulnerability of the poor and the lower middle class of people to this kind of allurement can be understood well from the latest incident that has taken place within the bounds of the capital city.
The fraudsters do one thing in common; they use the name of a cooperative society to cheat the poor. They use the name not just to earn confidence of their target-clients. The reason could be something else. The affairs under the control of the office of the registrar of cooperatives are administered and supervised very poorly. One can get away with any wrongdoing here in the absence of transparency and accountability. In the latest incident of fraud, a cooperative society was floated under the banner of Bangladesh Janakalyan Bohumukhi Samabaya Samity Ltd. (Bangladesh People's Welfare Multipurpose Cooperative Society) in Mir Hazaribagh. It matters little whether the society has genuine or fake registration. The department concerned hardly bothers to know about the status of the cooperative societies or their activities. The so-called auditors of the cooperative department can be managed very easily. Taking advantage of such a situation, dishonest people float cooperative societies and bank on the humans' inherent 'get-rich-quick' mentality to achieve their evil designs.
It is obvious that this kind of fraudulent activities cannot be accomplished beyond the knowledge of the police stations concerned. The police have their informers' network and they do know about the goings-on within their respective areas. The fraudsters, who are very skilful in wining the hearts of poor and simple people, make a liaison with the respective police stations and grease the palms of the police officials whenever necessary, well before the start of their operations. The Mir Hazaribagh incident is not an isolated one. There may be many more such incidents taking place right at the moment. What is important is that even if the masterminds of such fraudulent practices are arrested, the persons aggrieved do not get their investments back. So it is imperative for the government to stop recurrence of such incidents in future. The issuance of registration certificates to cooperative societies and social welfare organisations must be made stricter. Besides, the representatives of the local government bodies should monitor the activities such organisations, operating in their localities, for the greater benefit of the people.
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