CBI quizzes Bengal SIT officer
Debnath Banerjee first police officer to respond to summons after five others ignored them
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) Tuesday questioned an officer who was part of the special investigation team (SIT) that had first investigated the West Bengal’s ~24.6 billion Saradha ponzi scam in 2013.
Debnath Banerjee is the first police officer to respond to the CBI summons after five others ignored them. He was questioned for about five hours at Salt Lake on Kolkata outskirts and did not speak to the media afterwards.
Malda police superintendent Arnab Ghosh, too, was called for questioning on Tuesday, but he did not turn up. Telephone calls and messages to him went unanswered. Ghosh had a supervisory role in the SIT while Banerjee was the investigating officer.
Saradha chairman Sudipta Sen and his aide, Debjani Mukherjee, who were arrested in 2013, had told the CBI earlier that the SIT had seized a diary, pen drives and documents from the group’s office in Salt Lake.
The diary is believed to contain details of payments Sen had allegedly made to several people including politicians.
These documents have not been handed over to the CBI, which has been seeking to question the SIT members to know where these items are.
The scam relates to the collapse of Saradha Group’s Ponzi collective investment scheme. The group, a consortium of over 200 companies, had collected money from over 1.7 million depositors before the scheme collapsed in April 2013.
The West Bengal government constituted the SIT while the Centre also launched a probe into the scam through the Income Tax Department and Enforcement Directorate. The Supreme Court in May 2014 handed over the probe into the scam to the CBI.
A CBI officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they want to interrogate more SIT members, Dilip Hazra, Shankar Bhattacharya, Prabhakar Nath and Pinaki Roy.
The CBI had emailed West Bengal police chief Virendra in August, saying they wanted to interrogate Indian Police Service officers, Rajeev Kumar, Vineet Kumar Goyal, Tamal Basu as well as a retired officer, Pallab Kanti Ghosh, between August 21 and August 24. None of the officers appeared for questioning. They were part of the SIT.
The Saradha scam had led to the arrest of a serving minister, Madan Mitra, for the first time. He was released on bail in September 2016 after 21 months in jail. Ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Rajya Sabha members, Kunal Ghosh and Srinjoy Bose, were also arrested for their alleged role in the scam.
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) chief Amit Shah had targeted chief minister Mamata Banerjee over the scam at a public meeting in Kolkata on August 11. The TMC has repeatedly accused the Centre of using the CBI and ED to intimidate political opponents.
TMC leaders were tight-lipped over the issue. “Only the chief minister can speak on this issue,” said a minister, who did not wish to be named.
State BJP general secretary Sayantan Basu said the police officers should cooperate in any investigation to identify the culprits and beneficiaries of the scam.
The Left parties’ leader in the state assembly, Sujan Chakrabarty, called it is the duty of everyone to cooperate since the CBI investigation follows a Supreme Court order.
The CBI had summoned Rajeev Kumar, the Kolkata police commissioner who headed the SIT, twice in August and November 2017 to appear before it.
Kumar had in February 2017 filed a defamation case against BJP leader, Kailash Vijayvargiya, after he accused him of the destruction of evidence in the scam to shield a section of the ruling TMC.
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