The Directorate of National Consumers Right Protection (DNCRP) recently served a notice on controversial e-commerce platform Evaly asking to settle consumer complaints.

The letter, sent to Evaly CEO Mohammad Rassel on January 1, also sought to know in seven days how the complaints would be settled.

Evaly began its journey on December 16, 2018 through an advertising blitzkrieg and offering exorbitant discounts.

Customers later complained that it did not deliver products on taking advance payments of hundreds of crores of taka. Neither did it pay merchants who had initially supplied products.

Evaly's creditors are unlikely to get their money back as there is no documentation at the platform's end, making it difficult to verify who is owed what, found an audit into the company's books commissioned by a court-appointed board last year.

Rassel and his wife Shamima Nasrin, also a co-founder of Evaly, were arrested by the Rapid Action Battalion on September 16 in 2021 after a customer filed an embezzlement case against them with Gulshan Police Station.

Later, five other embezzlement cases were lodged against the couple with Dhanmondi Police Station and the court.

Nasrin was freed from jail on April 6 last year whereas Rassel from the Kashimpur prison on bail on December 18.

"Of the complaints filed against Evaly, about 6,500 have remained unsettled," AHM Shafiquzzaman, director general of the DNCRP, told The Daily Star yesterday.

"After coming out of jail, he (Rassel) started the business again. But he should pay the customers' dues first," he said.

"Evaly has already floated a new campaign called 'Big Bang'. We don't know if any new scam is in the making," he added.

Regarding the notice, Rassel told The Daily Star that they would give a reply "in seven days".

Evaly will simultaneously do business and solve all the problems it is facing now, he said yesterday.

"We can't solve all the problems in a day. We need time and we need to continue doing business," he added.