Forner Police Commissioner of Kolkata Rajeev Kumar. (Express archive)The Supreme Court on Thursday reserved its order on the CBI’s plea to permit custodial interrogation of former Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar in connection with the investigation in the Saradha chit fund scam, with the senior police officer telling the court that the demand was only to “humiliate” him.
“He has already undergone 40 hours of interrogation. Custodial interrogation is only to humiliate him. It’s trial by media going on here,” advocate Indira Jaising, appearing for Kumar, told a bench headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi.
Read | CBI custodial interrogation demand political game, says Rajeev Kumar
Jaising told the bench, which also comprised Justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, that Kumar had been awarded the President’s Medal in 2015 after due diligence of his credentials by the Ministry of Home Affairs, and that the CBI was now seeking his custody for something that happened in 2013.
The counsel said the agency had not established any mens rea on part of Kumar, whom it has accused of destroying evidence in the form of call data records.
“It’s a case of abuse of power by the CBI,” Jaising said, adding that Kumar was not in charge of the day-to-day investigations carried out by the SIT constituted by the state to probe the chit fund scam cases, but only in charge of the day-to-day functioning of the SIT.
Appearing for the probe agency, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta said “a castle is being built in the air to the effect that the CBI is hounding one person”.
Mehta said if the state police had the information, “there was nothing preventing them from telling us that they collected the data”.
