india

Updated: Sep 17, 2019 12:30 IST

Former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who on Saturday ignored CBI summons in the Saradha ponzi case, has filed a petition before the Barasat district judge court on Tuesday morning seeking anticipatory bail against possible arrest.

Earlier in the morning, a special court in the district refused to hear the petition. “Whether the petition will be accepted for hearing or rejected would be clear only after midday,” said CBI officers.

Kumar has been incommunicado since Friday when a Calcutta High Court bench removed his shield against arrest. Kumar was summoned to the CBI office on Saturday but he ignored the summons and also switched off his phone. A CBI team had gone to his house, but did not find him there.

Kumar is learnt to have sent an e-mail to the agency on Saturday, saying he is on leave and hence cannot respond to the summons in connection with the Sharadha chit fund case.

Kumar, a 1989 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, is now additional director general in charge of the Criminal Investigation Department (CID). He was the head of the Special Investigation Team (SIT), constituted by West Bengal’s Mamata Banerjee government, to investigate the scandal related to the 2013 collapse of Saradha Group, which allegedly ran Ponzi schemes that duped hundreds of thousands of investors.

Kumar has been accused of concealing and tampering with evidence to shield influential beneficiaries of the Saradha ponzi scheme. The scam is believed to have involved ₹2,460 crore, most of which was deposits made by lower middle-class and poor people from states such as Bengal, Assam, Odisha and Jharkhand.