-The Times of India CHINSURAH/SODEPUR: The body count in the aftermath of the Saradha collapse keeps going up. A director of a micro-finance company was murdered at his home in Hooghly's Chinsurah on Monday even as the father of a chit fund agent hanged himself after being beaten and humiliated by cheated depositors in Sodepur on the northern outskirts of Kolkata. This is the eighth suicide since the Saradha Group meltdown ruined...

-The Hindu Chennai: A team led by an IIT-Madras professor has devised a cheap and effective method to produce clean drinking water. It will soon be possible to produce 10 litres of water - free of bacteria and virus - at just Rs. 10-12 per month, for the daily consumption of a family of five. Prof. T. Pradeep of the department of chemistry at IIT-M and his team have made use of silver...

-The Times of India KOLKATA: Bengal finance minister Amit Mitra is in the CPM's firing line for attending a three-day Banga Sammelan at Las Vegas last year in which Sudipta Sen's Saradha Group was the main sponsor. A few days ago, the CPM had asked the government to reveal who sponsored chief minister Mamata Banerjee's chartered flight from Delhi on April 10. Mitra rejected the insinuations and said the state exchequer...

-The Telegraph Ranchi: Sluggish economy and soaring personal aspirations are teaming up to create fertile ground for quick-rich chit fund schemes and non-banking finance companies such as the now-infamous Saradha to mushroom, but rules to give Jharkhand investors the much-needed safety net are hanging fire since over a year. Jharkhand Assembly had early last year forwarded rules framed by the state's institutional finance department for the President's consideration under The Chit Funds...

-Economic and Political Weekly The Saradha group's collapse has possibly bankrupted lakhs of small investors robbing them of their life svaings, and has rendered thousands of its agents jobless. The scam highlights the failure of the government and its regulatory agencies to reign in the mushrooming chit fund companies in West Bengal. It also brings under the scanner the Trinamool Congress' proximity with the tainted group. In the wake of the...