Former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar
In yet another setback to top West Bengal police officer Rajeev Kumar, the Alipore District and Sessions Court on Saturday rejected his anticipatory bail plea after the CBI said he was breaking the law by evading its summons in the Saradha chit fund case.
Kumar, who is the Additional Director General of CID, had filed the bail plea in the court on Friday, 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.
District session judge in-charge Sujoy Sengupta rejected Kumar's plea on Saturday, though the IPS officer's counsel contended that his name was not in the charge sheets filed by the CBI.
Opposing the bail plea of Kumar, an erstwhile police commissioner of Bidhannagar Police Commisionerate, CBI counsel K C Mishra said he had headed the special investigation team formed by the West Bengal government in 2013 and had taken several decisions in the Saradha scam investigation.
"There are multiple points and we have seriously opposed the bail plea considering the social ramifications and the importance of the case as directed by the Supreme Court," he said.
The CBI counsel said Kumar, also the former city police commissioner, was breaking the law as he is evading summons of the investigation agency after the Calcutta High Court withdrew protection granted to him from arrest last week.
Kumar's counsel Gopal Haldar pleaded that the SIT had arrested several influential persons in the Saradha scam who had subsequently got convicted by court.
Besides, Kumar did not head the SIT but was mere a member of 13-member team, he said.
When the CBI took over the investigation on the orders of the Supreme Court in 2014, the SIT handed over to it the list of names of persons who were alleged to be connected with the Saradha scam, he said.
Haldar told the court that no new names other than those furnished by SIT had been added since the CBI took over the investigation. Even Kumar's name did not figure in any of the charge sheets filed by CBI in the case so far.
Earlier, Kumar had failed to get relief from the Barasat District and Sessions court on his anticipatory bail application in the case.
The CBI had moved the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM) at the Alipore court on Thursday seeking an arrest warrant against Kumar.
The court had disposed of CBI's application saying that the agency does not need its arrest warrant as the Supreme Court and the Calcutta High Court had already lifted the bar on his arrest in the Saradha chit fund case.
The team of CBI officials had on Friday gone to the official residence of Kumar on Park Street and another to a resort in South 24 Parganas to trace him.
Last week, the DG of West Bengal police apprised the CBI that Kumar was on leave from September 9 to 25.
The Saradha group of companies allegedly duped lakhs of people of Rs 2500 crore promising higher rates of return on their investments. Kumar is accused of tampering with crucial evidence in the case.
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