On Wednesday, 17 July, the Calcutta High Court began hearing former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar’s plea seeking protection from arrest in the Saradha chit fund case. After listening to arguments made by Kumar’s lawyer, the matter was adjourned till 2:30 pm on Thursday, 18 June, when the hearing is scheduled to resume.
The Court had earlier extended Kumar’s interim protection from arrest by the CBI till 22 July. Kumar had approached the High Court seeking to quash the CBI notice asking him to appear before the agency in connection with the Saradha investigation.
Kumar, who headed the police’s Special Investigation Team which probed the Saradha scam, has been accused of tampering with evidence related to the case.
What Happened at Court
Kumar’s lawyer Milon Mukherjee argued that the CBI was “picking and choosing” one officer from among a bunch of more than a 100 officers who were part of the SIT. Mukherjee also claimed, “The question troubling me is that the CBI has not been able to get one penny out of the money trail.”
It is surprising that SEBI officials have not been questioned even though the SIT had questioned SEBI. If the IT Act and SEBI regulations have been violated, what action did these authorities take in five years?Milon Mukherjee, Rajeev Kumar’s lawyer
Political Background
On 3 February, in an extraordinary turn of events, a CBI team that had arrived at Kumar’s residence was itself detained at a police station and later released.
Mamata Banerjee and her party had claimed that the CBI’s actions were an example of political vendetta by the BJP-led Centre against the TMC government in West Bengal, and especially in the run-up to the general election.
At the time, Banerjee had even staged a sit-in protest against the CBI’s actions.
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