Arrested chairman of scam-hit Saradha group Sudipta Sen was planning to apply for a bank licence with a capital of over Rs 1,000 crore funds allegedly cobbled from the money of numerous duped investors, an investigation has revealed.

The business venture, which could have been named 'Saradha bank', was being allegedly planned as a new market foray of the diversified group by Sen, but as investors raised their voices of being cheated early last year, the project could not see the light of the day.

In fresh revelations made by the investigating agencies of this case, the Enforcement Directorate has found and recovered documents which were to be used by the group for applying for a fresh bank licence, an opportunity that was announced by country's banking regulator RBI in February 2013.

The RBI, had then issued guidelines for application procedures for obtaining new bank licences and the deadline for it was kept as July 1. This year in April, the RBI granted licences to two of the total 25 applicant business groups. The banking regulator had advertised this opportunity after almost a decade, the last being in 2003-04.