After being questioned for three consecutive days, Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar is set to be further grilled in the multi-crore Saradha chit fund case on Monday by CBI. However, the national agency has informed that the questioning of former TMC lawmaker Kunal Ghosh is over for the time being.
Monday was the third consecutive day of grilling for Kumar and the second for Ghosh in the ponzi scam case worth around Rs. 2,000 crore. He has been asked to report for questioning tomorrow again, an official requesting anonymity.
Ghosh, who left the CBI premises 30 minutes after Kumar, told mediapersons, "I have been asked by CBI to attend this office related to the case. I have cooperated with the investigation and now I am going back to Kolkata". According to a well-placed source in the central probe agency, Kumar remained "cool" during Monday's grilling session.
Kumar claimed that he had played no active role in the Special Investigating Team (SIT) which was formed to probe the Saradha chit fund scam as most of the probe was conducted "at the police station-level". He claimed that most of the probe was supervised by Arnab Ghosh, the then deputy commissioner of police of the detective department (DD) of the Bidhannagar City Police when the SIT started conducting the investigations into the scam. Kumar led the SIT formed by West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to probe the Saradha scam before the case was handed over to the CBI by the Supreme Court.
At one point Kumar had asked to stop the recordings of the joint statement and conduct a narco test on Ghosh. Ghosh was ready for the test but demanded the same to be done on Kumar also, CBI official informed.
The court had chosen Shillong as a neutral meeting place "to avoid all unnecessary controversy" and had made it clear that Kumar would not be arrested.