Former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar on Monday failed to show up after he was summoned to the Central Bureau of Investigation office for questioning in connection with the Saradha scam, PTI reported. The investigating agency had asked the police official to come to its office in Kolkata’s Salt Lake area by 2 pm on Monday.
Officials from the CBI had delivered the summons to the Director General of Police Veerendra on Saturday. Kumar, who is the additional director general of police in the criminal investigation department at present, was also asked to appear for interrogation on Saturday.
The investigating agency reached the state secretariat in Howrah again on Monday and delivered letters to Chief Secretary Malay De and Home Secretary Alapan Bandyopadhyay on Kumar’s failure to show up for questioning. The CBI sought details of Kumar’s whereabouts and the grounds on which he had gone for a month-long leave, an unidentified senior police officer told PTI.
The agency also wanted to know when Kumar would resume work. The Calcutta High Court order that withdrew Kumar’s protection from arrest on Friday was also included in the letters delivered on Monday. The court had also rejected the officer’s plea to quash the CBI notice to him to appear before them.
Following the High Court order, the CBI had served a notice to Kumar to appear before it on Saturday for questioning. The probe agency had earlier told the court that Kumar did not appear before it on frivolous grounds.
Kumar is accused of tampering with crucial evidence in the Saradha chit fund case. He had headed the Special Investigation Team set up by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to investigate the scam before the Supreme Court handed over the case to the Central Bureau of Investigation in 2014. The agency wanted to interrogate him as he reportedly gave evasive replies during questioning in Shillong in February.
The Saradha company ran several ponzi schemes in West Bengal, allegedly defrauding lakhs of people. Thousands of crores of rupees were lost after the scheme collapsed in 2013. Its promoter Sudipta Sen was arrested the same year.
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