Former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who is believed to be close Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee, has filed a petition seeking anticipatory bail fearing arrest by the Central Bureau of Investigation(CBI) as he failed to turn up for inquisition in the Saradha Chit Fund scam.
Saradha Chit Fund Scam: The wife of Kolkata’s former police commissioner, Rajeev Kumar, has filed an anticipatory bail application for him at Calcutta High Court. (file pic – Rajeev Kumar) pic.twitter.com/AmiGeQI42c
— ANI (@ANI) September 23, 2019
Kumar’s plea for seeking anticipatory bail was already turned down by a court in Kolkata on Saturday. Today, Rajeev Kumar’s anticipatory bail plea was today filed his wife at the Calcutta High Court. The CBI is yet to trace Rajeev Kumar.
On Friday last week, Kumar, who is currently serving as the additional director general of West Bengal Police’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), moved the court seeking anticipatory bail, days after the Kolkata high court cancelled his interim protection from arrest.
The CBI advocate Kalicharan Mishra then argued that Kumar should not be granted bail “considering the social ramification of the case and in the interest of fair and transparent investigation”.
The Supreme Court has already that the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has in its status report made ‘very very serious’ revelations on the interrogation of former Kolkata Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in the Saradha chit fund scam. The CBI had claimed that the police had taken charge of all evidence and documents pertaining to the investigation and a lot of it had already been caused to be disappeared.
The Saradha scam broke out into the open in 2013 when a ponzi scheme run by the Saradha Group, a consortium of over 200 private companies, collapsed after collecting hundreds and thousands of crores from over 15 lakh investors.
Senior leaders of the Trinamool Congress have been alleged to be intimately involved in the scam ever since the CBI initiated its investigation. In December 2014, state transport and sports minister, Madan Mitra, was arrested by the central investigative agency in connection with the scam. Mitra was accused of criminal conspiracy, cheating and misappropriation.
The state of West Bengal was amidst massive chaos in February 2019 after the Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee had resorted to ‘dharna’ politics to allegedly save herself from Saradha chit fund scam investigation. Mamata Banerjee had sat on ‘Dharna’ after Kolkata Police had forcefully detained eight CBI officials who had gone to visit police commissioner Rajeev Kumar to obtain crucial information regarding the Saradha scam.
