Sacked resort manager says CPM link cost him Saradha job - Employee claims Sudipta told him if he needed the job, he would have to be in Trinamul

SNEHAMOY CHAKRABORTY, TT, Bolpur, April 24: A sacked manager of a Saradha Group-run resort in Birbhum’s Bolpur today alleged he was removed by company boss Sudipta Sen because he was a CPM worker.

The Telegraph could not verify Rafiqul Islam’s claim as no Saradha official was available for comment. The newspaper is reproducing the statements made by the former manager.

The current employees of the Kopai resort fled hours after Sen’s arrest yesterday after locking the facility and keeping all the lights on.

The resort was taken by the Saradha Group on a 99-year lease from Calcutta-based businessman Debashis Saha last year. Repeated calls to Saha’s cellphone went unanswered.

Rafiqul, 39, said: “Sudipta Sen met me at his office at Midland Park in Salt Lake Sector V around midnight last November and told me he had information that I was a CPM worker. He told me that he would not be able to employ CPM workers. He told me: ‘Kaj korte hole Trinamul korte hobe (If you want to work, you will have to join Trinamul). I told him I had a family and agreed to accept his conditions. But soon after he told me that I was fired,” said Rafiqul.

He said that a few days later, he received a call from the Saradha office informing him that he had been sacked. “There was no written job agreement. Everything was done verbally. I was sacked verbally,” Rafiqul said.

He said he had been the manager of the resort since it was set up in 2009. The resort under the banner of the Saradha Group was inaugurated on December 5,2012.

Rafiqul alleged that after Saradha took over the resort, local Trinamul leaders started complaining against him.

“The leaders threatened to get me sacked because I was a CPM worker. Thirty people who used to work for Saradha in Nadia were employed at the resort. One of them, Apu Das, told me in November to meet Sudipta Sen at his Midland Park office late in the night,” Rafiqul said.

Asked about threats to Rafiqul, a Trinamul general secretary in Birbhum, Mushtaq Hossain, said: “I am not aware of anyone from Trinamul threatening Rafiqul. He may have been mistaken.”

Das was made the manager of the resort after Rafiqul was sacked.

The resort stopped receiving guests on April 20.

Das, who was among the employees who fled, said over phone: “We fled because we panicked. I have a family to look after. I was only a salaried employee of the resort. Please don’t ask me anything about the resort. I am sorry.”

Local CPM leaders alleged that Rafiqul was not the only person with Left links to be “victimised”.

“Many labourers who used to maintain the resort were asked to leave because they were CPM supporters. Local Trinamul leaders used to keep a watch on the resort and drove out labourers who were CPM supporters. Several local Trinamul leaders attended the inauguration of the resort in December last year after Saradha took its lease,” said Samir Bhattacharya, a district secretariat member of the CPM.

District president of Trinamul trade union INTTUC Bikash Roy Chowdhury, who attended the programme, said he did not know about the sham deposit schemes run by the Saradha Group.

“When the resort was inaugurated in December last year, I was the secretary of the Bolpur Hoteliers’ Association. So I had been invited to the programme. How am I supposed to know that it is a sham company?” Roy Chowdhury asked.

A police team visited the resort this afternoon after news spread that the employees had fled. Three policemen have been deployed at the resort to prevent it from being targeted. “We are keeping a watch on the resort,” a senior police officer said.

Mohammad Kamal, a resident, said: “We saw the employees, along with manager Apu Das, leaving one by one after 4pm yesterday. We think they fled after watching the news of Sudipta Sen being arrested.”