Kolkata ex-top cop seeks anticipatory bail; again fails to appear before CBI

KOLKATA : Former Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar on Friday filed an anticipatory bail plea in the Alipore district and sessions court, a day after a city court said that the CBI does not need a warrant to arrest him in the Saradha chit fund scam case.

The plea is likely to be taken up for hearing by the Alipore district and sessions court on Saturday, Kumar’s lawyer Gopal Haldar said.

Earlier in the day, Kumar had failed to turn up at the city’s CBI office, a day after the agency issued a fresh notice, asking him to appear before it in connection with the probe into Saradha chit fund scam, sources said.

The former Kolkata police commissioner is alleged to have suppressed evidence crucial for the investigation into the multicrore ponzi scam.

Earlier in the week, too, Kumar had defied the CBI summons to appear before its investigating team at the CGO complex office in Salt Lake.

A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) team had been searching for Kumar, who is now the Additional Director General of Police in the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), across various locations in Kolkata. In a letter to the West Bengal Director General of Police, the agency had on Thursday sought Kumar’s phone number on which he could be contacted.

Kumar was part of a special investigation team (SIT) set up by the West Bengal government to investigate the scam before the Supreme Court handed over the case to the CBI in 2014, along with other chit fund cases.

The CBI had moved Alipore court in the city, seeking an arrest warrant for Kumar. The court reserved its order on the application for the arrest warrant after submissions by the lawyers of the CBI and Kumar, who is currently the additional director general of West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department.