Bhubaneswar, Jul 12 (IANS): The Justice M.M. Das commission of inquiry, which is probing the multi-crore chit fund scam in Odisha, submitted its seventh interim report to the state government on Friday.

The commission has furnished the details of over one lakh small investors, who had invested less than Rs 10,000 in various chit fund companies.

The commission recommended the government to refund money to the small depositors duped by chit fund companies in the state.

"In the seventh interim report, as many as 1,36,027 small investors have been identified during the inquiry from January 2019 to May 2019. The Commission has recommended refunding money to these investors from the corpus fund," said Justice Das.

A total of 421 companies were involved in the seventh phase of inquiry. Till now, 1,931 investors have got back their money from the commission, Das said.

The commission informed that a total of 4,97,844 small investors have been identified till date.

The government had formed the one-man commission on July 9, 2013 to probe the chit fund scam and identify the investors.