KOLKATA: CBI on Sunday stepped up the heat to track down Rajeev Kumar, CID’s additional director-general, a day before he is expected to make a fresh plea for anticipatory bail at Calcutta High Court.
The agency questioned his personal guard and a close aide and spoke to Kumar’s wife Sanchita, a senior IRS officer, for the second time in as many days.
The efforts to trace an “elusive” Kumar coincided with CBI sending him a fresh summons — this time in the Rose Valley case — asking him to appear before the agency’s CGO headquarters by 11.30pm on Monday. Around the same time, at least eight CBI teams fanned out across the city to track him down. They first reached the Alipore Body Guard Lines, looking for his bodyguards. At least two bodyguards are still on duty with Kumar and the agency wanted to track down their movements, said sources. The team also went to a house on Belvedere Road and made a recce of the Kalighat area.
The agency — on Saturday, it had claimed that Kumar was “absconding” and “not cooperating” with them in the investigation — sent a fresh summons to Kumar in connection with the Rose Valley probe. A team of CBI investigators reached 34 Park Street, Kumar’s official residential address, on Sunday afternoon. They served the notice with Sanchita and spoke to her for nearly 20 minutes.
Reasoning this tactical shift, a CBI officer said: “Kumar was the Bidhannagar police commissioner and both the Saradha and Rose Valley groups had headquarters in his jurisdiction. Money collection of the two firms should not have evaded his notice.” In August, CBI had served a notice to Kumar under 160 CrPC in connection with the Rose Valley muddle, during which he appeared before the agency. The Rose Valley case, unlike the Saradha case, is registered in Bhubaneshwar and is being heard by a special CBI court in Bhubaneshwar. Any appeal, sources said, against this can only be made before Odisha courts.
Kumar’s lawyer, Gopal Haldar, said he had conveyed to the CBI about his absence through a letter on August 28. “How can they call him an absconder? There is nothing that binds him to stay in that Park Street residence in case of any emergency,” he said. Kumar’s legal team indicated he may appeal against the Alipore court’s refusal to grant him pre-arrest bail at a division bench of Calcutta High Court. The appeal will be filed on Monday and, subject to the court’s approval, the earliest it can be heard is on Tuesday. Kumar has a window till October 1 at Calcutta HC before it closes for its autumn break.
The agency questioned his personal guard and a close aide and spoke to Kumar’s wife Sanchita, a senior IRS officer, for the second time in as many days.
The efforts to trace an “elusive” Kumar coincided with CBI sending him a fresh summons — this time in the Rose Valley case — asking him to appear before the agency’s CGO headquarters by 11.30pm on Monday. Around the same time, at least eight CBI teams fanned out across the city to track him down. They first reached the Alipore Body Guard Lines, looking for his bodyguards. At least two bodyguards are still on duty with Kumar and the agency wanted to track down their movements, said sources. The team also went to a house on Belvedere Road and made a recce of the Kalighat area.
The agency — on Saturday, it had claimed that Kumar was “absconding” and “not cooperating” with them in the investigation — sent a fresh summons to Kumar in connection with the Rose Valley probe. A team of CBI investigators reached 34 Park Street, Kumar’s official residential address, on Sunday afternoon. They served the notice with Sanchita and spoke to her for nearly 20 minutes.
Reasoning this tactical shift, a CBI officer said: “Kumar was the Bidhannagar police commissioner and both the Saradha and Rose Valley groups had headquarters in his jurisdiction. Money collection of the two firms should not have evaded his notice.” In August, CBI had served a notice to Kumar under 160 CrPC in connection with the Rose Valley muddle, during which he appeared before the agency. The Rose Valley case, unlike the Saradha case, is registered in Bhubaneshwar and is being heard by a special CBI court in Bhubaneshwar. Any appeal, sources said, against this can only be made before Odisha courts.
Kumar’s lawyer, Gopal Haldar, said he had conveyed to the CBI about his absence through a letter on August 28. “How can they call him an absconder? There is nothing that binds him to stay in that Park Street residence in case of any emergency,” he said. Kumar’s legal team indicated he may appeal against the Alipore court’s refusal to grant him pre-arrest bail at a division bench of Calcutta High Court. The appeal will be filed on Monday and, subject to the court’s approval, the earliest it can be heard is on Tuesday. Kumar has a window till October 1 at Calcutta HC before it closes for its autumn break.
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