Even as West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee
continued her dharna over CBI’s attempt to question city police chief
Rajeev Kumar in chit fund cases, its ripple effect was felt in
Parliament in New Delhi and the battle also moved to the Supreme Court,
which will hear the matter on Tuesday.
A day after a CBI team that had
gone to Kolkata to question Kumar in connection with chit fund scams was
briefly detained, the probe agency wasted no time in moving the Supreme
Court on Monday morning, seeking directions to West Bengal government
to cooperate with the investigation and to make available the police
commissioner for interrogation.
The CBI has alleged in its petition that
Kumar, who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that was formed
by the state in April 2013 to probe the Saradha chit fund scam,
destroyed electronic evidence related to the ponzi scam cases. The case
was taken up by the CBI in 2014 on the Supreme Court’s orders.
Turning down the CBI’s petition for urgent hearing, the apex court bench, comprising Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi
and Justice Sanjeev Khanna, asked the agency to place all evidence
before it through an affidavit while saying it would come down heavily
on Kumar if he “even remotely” tried to destroy the evidence.
