Kolkata Police chief is quizzed for eight hours

Counsel, 2 IPS colleagues not allowed to be present during interrogation

The CBI began questioning the Kolkata Police chief on Saturday at highly secured agency's office here in connection with chit fund scam cases, officials said.

Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar, his counsel Biswajit Deb and senior IPS officers Javed Shamim and Murlidhar Sharma arrived at the probe agency's office at 11 am, they said.

Kumar's counsel and the two IPS officers were asked to leave the CBI office within 30 minutes, they said.

Kumar is being interrogated at the highly secured CBI office at Oakland area in the Meghalaya capital where three senior CBI sleuths from Delhi reached on Friday.

The Supreme Court had on Tuesday directed the Kolkata Police chief to appear before the CBI and "faithfully" cooperate in the investigation of cases arising out of the Saradha chit fund scam. It chose Shillong as the neutral meeting place "to avoid all unnecessary controversy", while making it clear that Kumar will not be arrested.

The CBI had alleged in the Supreme Court that Kumar, who was leading the SIT probe into Saradha chit fund scam, tampered with the electronic evidence and handed over documents to the agency, some of which were “doctored”. The central investigating agency had said that its officials had wanted to question Kumar to plug the holes in the Saradha scam probe as he was allegedly in possession of certain key documents as a member of the SIT.