CBI issues lookout notice against Kolkata ex-top cop

| | Kolkata
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CBI issues lookout notice against Kolkata ex-top cop

Monday, 27 May 2019 | Saugar Sengupta | Kolkata

There was more trouble for former Kolkata Commissioner of Police Rajeev Kumar. Hours after the Supreme Court order providing the 1989-batch IPS officer protection from arrest for seven days lapsed on Saturday midnight, the CBI on Sunday served him a notice to appear before its officials on Monday morning.

A team of CBI sleuths led by senior officials Partho Mukherjee and Manish Upadhyay on Sunday evening landed at the top officer’s official residence at Rawdon Street in Kolkata in search of Kumar.

Apparently failing to find the top cop there, the officers arrived at the office of DCP South where a notice was served for Kumar to appear before the Economic Offence Wing officials at the CGO complex. He has been asked to report at the CBI office by 10 am in the morning, agency sources said, adding repeated efforts to contact him over telephone had failed.

Kumar was frantically trying to seek anticipatory bail from a lower court at Barasat after the apex court refused to hear his plea for extension of the shield against arrest. The bail was rejected at lower court on technical grounds on Saturday and he was likely to apply for the same past 10 am on Monday making the CBI order directing him to appear before 10 am significant.

Earlier the CBI on Sunday issued a “look-out notice” on Kumar, who is being probed in the multi-crore Sharada and other chit fund cases for his role as the head of the Special Investigation Team formed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to investigate the case.

He functioned on the same post in 2013-2014 until the Supreme Court transferred the case to the CBI.

Debjani Mukherjee, a prime accused in the case had earlier deposed before the agencies that the SIT had seized a number of evidences including pen drives, laptops, red dairy etc from the Sharada office. The CBI, however, told the court that the Bengal Police or for that matter Kumar had not handed over the seized objects to its officers.

When Kumar allegedly refused to comply with multiple letters from the CBI demanding his appearance the agency moved the Supreme Court which directed the top cop to cooperate with the agency in investigation.

The interrogation was carried out at Shillong. However the CBI again moved the court seeking his custody on the grounds that he had not cooperated with the agency. The court provided Kumar a seven-day shield against arrest directing him to approach a lower court for a regular bail.

But the same was refused by the Barasat court on Saturday. Even as the apex court order ended on Saturday midnight the CBI issued a look-out notice. The look-out circulars are issued to trace persons absconding from law and also to prevent and monitor effectively the entry or exit of such persons who may be required by law enforcement authorities.

Kumar could not be contacted for his comments.

Meanwhile, the whole lot of IPS officers, who were earlier transferred by the Election Commission for their alleged partisan ways following complaints from Opposition outfits, were on Sunday restored to their original postings by the Mamata Banerjee Government, Home Ministry sources said.

Among the officials returned to their original postings were Rajeev Kumar who would now return as ADG CID, Gyanwant Singh CP Bidhannagar, DP Singh, Rajesh Kumar, NR Babu, Anuj Sharma and others.

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