The Central Bureau of Investigation on Yesterday interrogated Arnab Ghosh, the former deputy commissioner, detective department, of Bidhannagar Commissionerate and one of the key members of the state appointed SIT that had investigated the Saradha scam back in 2013.
CBI sources said that Ghosh was questioned regarding some “missing” articles like a red diary and a pen drive that the central agency had all along claimed that the state-appointed SIT that went into the details of the seizure list following arrests of Sudipto Sen and Debjani Mukherjee from Sonemarg, Kashmir, in 2013 had deliberately withheld from handing over to it despite repeated appraisals.
Moreover, Ghosh being the second in command in the Special Investigation Team (SIT) formed by the state headed by Rajeev Kumar, the then commissioner of police, Bidhannagar, and a close aide of the 1989 batch IPS officer, today’s marathon questioning of the former DC DD, claimed a CBI source, was to put pressure on Kumar.
The source claimed that Ghosh had acknowledged during questioning that he in the SIT had acted according to “instructions that came from the top” but he did not mention the name.
The source also claimed that some of Ghosh’s statements that were recorded today were inconsistent with the statements recorded earlier by the agency of those like Prabhakar Nath, the first IO in the Sardha case, who deposed before the agency yesterday and Dilip Hazra or Shankar Bhattacharya who too were part of the SIT and had their statements recorded before the CBI earlier.
The source also claimed that the former DC DD was not forthcoming on some of the questions that the sleuths had put to him and tried to avoid a direct answer.