Shibaji Panja is a businessman from

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , List of renamed places in India#West Bengal, the official name until 2001) is the Capital city, capital of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of West Bengal, on the eastern ba ...

, known to be close to

Mamata Banerjee Mamata Banerjee (; born 5 January 1955) is an Indian politician who is serving as the eighth and current chief minister of the Indian state of West Bengal since 20 May 2011, the first woman to hold the office. Having served many times as a Un ...

. quote: Panja is known for his proximity to the Chief Minister and considered one of her closest aides.... While Panja is referred often as a "prominent businessman" the nature of his business is unclear. "He has no business as he is a plain racketeer, who takes loans from banks and never returns," said one of his former associates. Shibaji did his education in Kolkata and started RP Infosystems which was manufacturing the very popular PC brand CHIRAG. Under his guidance, CHIRAG became one of the top indigenously manufactured computer brands in India. He was arrested in February 2015 on charges of having forged papers for taking a Rs. 18 crore loan from

Industrial Finance Corporation of India IFCI, previously Industrial Finance Corporation of India, is a development finance institution under the ownership of Ministry of Finance, Government of India. Established in 1948 as a statutory corporation, IFCI is currently a company listed on ...

. The arrest occurred while Panja was accompanying Mamata as part of the team returning from a visit to Bangladesh, causing widespread media coverage and opposition accusations of harbouring criminals in her court. Banerjee has said that what businessmen in her entourage may have been doing is not related to her. The Economic Offences Wing of the

Delhi Police The Delhi Police (DP) is the law enforcement agency for the National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). Delhi Police comes under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), Government of India. In 2015, sanctioned strength of Delhi ...

investigated and claimed that the purchase order, invoices, ferry receipts and acknowledgement notes were all forged, and the firm address was found to be non-existent. The matter is still sub-judice and Panja was granted bail for the case in question by the competent Court.

Profile

Panja had been appointed to several high-powered West Bengal committees related to film and culture and is an official advisor for industrial promotion. Panja was one of the founders of the RP Group, a set of businesses marketing a computer branded "Chirag" and also in film production. The RP Group also is in control of the popular TV News Channel

Kolkata TV Kolkata TV is a 24-hour Bengali news channel launched by SST Media in 2006. Ex ABP man Suman Chattopadhyay is responsible for its birth. Now it is owned by Kaustuv Ray, chairman of RP Group. The slogan used by the channel is ''Raatdin Saatdi ...

. With the revoking of excise benefits, the Indian Computer brands such as HCL, Wipro, Zenith, PCS and CHIRAG were all competing directly with the MNC's without any price advantage which was not the case earlier. This proved to be the bane for all these brands and all of them are today non-existent in the market. Since then, Panja resigned from the board of the RP Group in early 2013 by officially striking off his name from the Registrar of Companies. He is now a successful producer of content for Bengali Entertainment channels such as STAR Jalsa and ETv Bangla.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Panja, Shib Indian fraudsters Living people Businesspeople from Kolkata Crime in West Bengal Indian prisoners and detainees Year of birth missing (living people)