india

Updated: Mar 27, 2019 00:08 IST

The Supreme Court on Monday said there were “very, very serious” allegations against former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar in the Central Bureau of Investigation’s status report on the Saradha chit fund scam.

A three-judge bench led by the Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi said that “facts having serious bearings are disclosed in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) status report” and that the agency should file an application against Kumar in the next 10 days. The Central Bureau of Investigation filed the status report based on last month’s interrogation of Kumar, who is accused of tampering with evidence pertaining to the Saradha chit fund case.

The court also refused to drop contempt proceedings against the West Bengal home secretary and the director general of police for “wilful and deliberate violation” of apex court orders.

The CBI had last month filed a contempt petition against Rajeev Kumar, the state director general of police (DGP) and the home secretary, saying the three officials were not cooperating in the Saradha case investigation. In an affidavit filed in the top court on February 18, the probe agency alleged “even after the CBI was entrusted with the investigation on 9.5.2014, Rajeev Kumar was not parting with the investigation material containing the evidence collected by the SIT [special investigation team] headed by him clearly in connivance with the main accused persons”. “...It is submitted that in spite of the continuous insistence and follow-up by the CBI, Rajeev Kumar furnished only CDRs of the prime accused only on 28.6.2018.

The CDRs of the accused when analysed by the CBI were found to be tampered [with], doctored and material evidence had been destroyed,” the affidavit read. Kumar, a 1989-batch Indian Police Service officer, is known for his proximity to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

He headed the SIT formed by the state government to probe the Saradha scam in April 2013. On February 3, Banerjee launched a 48-hour dharna in Kolkata in protest against the entry of a CBI team to Kumar’s residence to question him in connection with the case. Subsequently, Kumar had to face questioning in Shillong for five days between February 9 and 13 under directions by the top court. The Saradha Group, which operated in states such as West Bengal, Assam and Odisha, had collected~200-300 billion from about 1.8 million depositors — mostly poor and lower middle-class people — before it collapsed in 2013.