Key police officers refuse to appear before CBI in Saradha case?

CBI has taken decisive steps in three high profile investigations it is conducting in West Bengal—Saradha, Rose Valley and Narada sting operation. The cases have been sped up after the visit of joint director of the agency, Rakesh Asthana, to Kolkata couple of months back.

The agency yesterday has filed a second charge-sheet in the sessions court of Kolkata on the Rose Valley case where it mentioned the money involved in the scam amounted to Rs 17,500 cr.

Among the prominents, who were arrested in the case, include Trinamool Congress leader in Lok Sabha Sudip Bandhopadhya and MP Tapas Paul. Both the leaders are on bail.

The agency has also issued summons to three top IPS officer and a retired IPS officer of Kolkata to appear for interrogation by August 24. They are Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar, additional CP Veneet Goel, Inspector General rank officer, Tamal Basu, and former joint commissioner (Crime), Pallab Kanti Ghosh. Money involved in the Saradha scam amounts to approx. Rs 20,000 cr.

None of the officers—current or former—appeared before the CBI's CGO office in Kolkata so far. Kumar, the Kolkata police officer, earlier had written to CBI director Alok Verma and termed his earlier summons as objectionable and illegal.

The letter of asking all these officers to appear before the CBI was sent to West Bengal's director general of police, Virendra.

However, some experts have pointed out that there was a mistake on the part of the CBI as DG of West Bengal could ask the inspector general Basu to appear before the agency. He cannot issue order to Kolkata police commissioner asking him to appear before CBI as Kolkata police head reports directly to the home secretary, like DG of West Bengal.

It was, however, not clear whether the summons were not complied because of procedural mistakes or there was a clear decision taken not to appear before the agency. The Supreme Court last month had expressed its anguish at the slow pace investigation of the high profile scam investigation in Bengal, conducted by the CBI, and asked Bengal police to cooperate with the premiere agency of India.

All the four officers, summoned by CBI, was part of the special investigation team formed by Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to probe the scam shortly after the company fell in 2014. CBI told the apex court of India that all evidences, lying with the state police, were not made available to them when CBI took up the investigation at the instruction of the Supreme Court of India.

CBI also summoned the private secretary of the West Bengal transport minister, Suvendu Adhikary, who was caught by many others, taking money in the sting operation conducted by the Narada group head Mathew Samuel. Adhikary is Banerjee's key in the run up to the election in 2019 as he has had huge responsibilities to organise the party in different districts across the state.

Adhikary's officer has also not appeared so far.