Kolkata: The CBI is planning to approach an agency court in West Bengal to issue an arrest warrant against former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who it says is ‘untraceable’.
Kumar, currently the additional director general (ADG) of the West Bengal CID, has ignored two consecutive CBI summons, on Sunday and Monday, following which the central agency wrote to top civil servants of the state government, including the director general of police (DGP), chief secretary and the home secretary, on the police officer’s whereabouts.
The former commissioner, wanted for questioning in the Saradha scam, had responded to the first CBI summons Saturday after the Calcutta High Court Friday rejected his plea seeking protection from CBI arrest.
Kumar had then requested the CBI to grant him a month’s time to appear before it but the agency refused. He has since been off the radar.
A senior CBI official said state chief secretary Malay De and DGP Virendra had responded to the agency’s letters stating that the “official communication regarding the summons” was sent to Kumar’s residence at Park Street in Kolkata.
Kumar is learnt to have communicated with the government through his lawyers, saying his advocates would take the legal process forward as he was on leave. He is not in his residence and his primary mobile phone is switched off. It has also been learnt that the former commissioner has already filed a petition seeking anticipatory bail before the CBI court in Barasat.
Kumar was part of a special investigation team that probed the Saradha scam before the Supreme Court handed over the case to the CBI in 2014. The Saradha scam was a ponzi scheme in which the firm allegedly duped investors to the tune of Rs 2,500 crore.
The case has been a bone of contention between the Mamata Banerjee-led ruling Trinamool and the BJP, amid allegations that a number of TMC leaders, including MPs, ministers and MLAs, were involved in the scam.
Also read: Not just Rajeev Kumar, 3 more top IAS and IPS officers close to Mamata are being probed
The Kolkata HC setback
Kumar had approached the Calcutta High Court seeking to quash the proceedings against him in the CBI court.
Between 17 June and 13 September, there were 25 hearings in which Kumar was represented by a battery of six senior advocates led by Milon Mukherjee, while CBI had four advocates.
A single-judge bench of the court, however, refused to grant him protection from the arrest Friday.
The court further observed, in its 37-page order, that “the nature of the relief sought for, is blanket protection of not arresting the petitioner in connection with the impugned criminal proceedings except after making an application before this Court by the CBI and disclosing the materials against him.
“This type of protection as prayed for by the petitioner is not available under the law and cannot be entertained,” the court said. “If the relief as prayed for is granted, then it would cause unnecessary interference with the investigation.”
Also read: Rajeev Kumar, a mighty Kolkata cop close to Mamata, is now just a pale shadow of himself