The former Kolkata top cop Rajeev Kumar again failed to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Tuesday for questioning in the Saradha scam case, official sources said.
Earlier, Kumar did not appear before the agency on Monday afternoon after he was summoned for a second time. The CBI is talking to its lawyers to chalk out its next move, a source related to the probe said.
According to the source, the CBI had summoned Kumar to appear before it on Tuesday at 10 am at its Salt Lake office in Kolkata.
The agency is discussing its next move by holding talks with its lawyers, a source related to the probe said.
According to the source, the CBI had summoned Kumar to appear before it on Tuesday at 10 am at its Salt Lake office in Kolkata. “But he again failed to depose before the agency,” the source added.
Kumar is currently the West Bengal CID Additional Director General and was part of a special investigation team set up by the state government to investigate the Saradha scam before the Supreme Court handed over the case to the CBI in 2014, along with other chit fund cases.
With former city police commissioner Rajeev Kumar ‘untraceable’ and the CBI unable to establish contact with him, two officers of the Central agency on Monday, visited Nabanna to hand over letters to top state government officials seeking information on the whereabouts of Kumar.
According to a CBI source, the officers went to Nabanna to hand over four letters, two addressed to the state DGP Virendra, and one each to state chief secretary Moloy De and home secretary Alapan Banerjee, seeking information regarding the whereabouts of Kumar, who according to a government source, is on leave from 9 September to 25 September.
“The DGP office has conveyed the CBI’s message to Kumar and also about its summons to appear before the agency,” he said.
After Calcutta High Court withdrew his protection from arrest, the CBI had served fresh notice to Kumar on Friday asking him to appear before it on Saturday in connection with its probe into the Saradha scam.
However, Kumar has sought more time to appear before the investigating officer of the case.
The Saradha chit fund scam case that saw thousands of people lose their hard earned money with some pushed to the extreme point to end their lives. Kumar, who headed the special investigation team (SIT) in 2013 as the Commissioner of Bidhannagar police that probed the Saradha scam, is accused of tampering with evidence in this case. The Supreme Court in May 2014 handed over the case to the CBI.
The investigating agency had in May sent a notice to Kumar asking him to appear before it and later issued a lookout notice alerting all airports and immigration authorities against him leaving the country.
Kumar had been embroiled in a controversy for being at loggerheads with the CBI over its investigations into the Saradha chit fund and Rose Valley scams. On February 3, 2019, a team of CBI officers was stopped from entering the residence of Kumar, who was at the time the city police chief, when they had gone to question him in connection with the scam cases.
The move had led Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to sit on a dharna in the heart of the city, protesting against the CBI’s act. The CBI officers’ raid on Rajeev Kumar was, according to Banerjee “an attack on constitutional norms”. The Supreme Court on 5 February asked the Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar to appear before the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and cooperate with its investigation into the Saradha chit fund scam.