The quiet Jhenaidah man scammed Tk2,500 crore in seven years
Tk2,500crore. That is the amount that Faruque Ahmed Kajol, aka Hundi Kajol, is said to have scammed people out of between 1993 to 2000.
One of the largest and the first scam of its kind took place in a quiet village in Jhenidah. Although Kajol has since been sentenced and has absconded, the trail of destruction that he left behind continues to haunt the entire locality.
But how did Hundi Kajol even manage to sway people? And was he working alone?
“Who doesn’t know Hundi Kajol? They may not like talking about him, but many of them made money from him. And many of them lost everything,” Rintu, a tea-seller in Jhenidah’sKotchandpur, says.
Twenty years since one of the country’s biggest scams took place, the anger at the man who manufactured it – Hundi Kajol – remains palpable. Perhaps anger is not the right word. Fury, may be more appropriate.
How much did Rintu lose? “I don’t want to say the amount. Let’s say that if it was Tk5 lakh, that is still a lot of money for me.”
Rintu is under no illusions that he is going to get his money back. It’s lost to time.
Nazrul Islam, a retired teacher who went on to become the general secretary of the Lagnikarider Taka Uddhar Sangram Parishad, a committee formed to retrieve the swindled money, is another indirect victim of Kajol’s Ponzi scheme.
“I first heard of the scam when a local who…
