After remaining at large for more than a month and armed with a High Court order for anticipatory bail, former Kolkata Commissioner of Police, Rajeev Kumar on Thursday appeared at the Alipore Court which granted him bail for two sureties of Rs 50,000 each.
Kumar’s role — as the chief of the Special Investigation Team constituted in 2013 by the State Government to probe the multi-crore Saradha and other chit fund cases — is being investigated by the Central Bureau of Investigation.
The senior IPS officer and arguably one of the best in the country in terms of handling cyber crimes is currently the functioning as the Additional Director General of CID. He had been underground ever since the Supreme Court and Calcutta High Court withdrew his protection from arrest in the case. Since then the CBI was after him visiting his residence on a multiple occasion and issuing notices of appearance repeatedly even as his plea for anticipatory bail was rejected by the lower court.
Subsequently after a marathon hearing in the Calcutta High Court a division bench on Tuesday granted him anticipatory bail following which Kumar appeared in the public for the first time in many weeks.
The Calcutta High Court had on Tuesday given anticipatory bail to Kumar, who is currently the additional director general of the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department.
“He appeared before the Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Subrata Mukherjee and was granted bail as per the High Court order,” his lawyer Gopal Haldar said.
In February, Kumar was questioned by CBI in connection with the case for over five days in Shillong on a Supreme Court order. Both the Left and the Congress have alleged a “setting” (adjustment) between the Trinamool Congress and BJP if one looked at the way the drama around Kumar was enacted in the past a few weeks or so.
Senior leaders of both the parties questioned the way he could managed to get bail — at a time when CBI was apparently hot in his pursuit — soon after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee visited Delhi and met Prime Minister Narendra Modi after a gap of more than two years.
“Here we see the CBI hot in his pursuit and there the Chief Minister rushes to Delhi and meets Prime Minister and Home Minister Amit Shah and then in the next hearing in the High Court he gets bail,” said CPI(M) leader Md Salim saying “a former Minister of the Congress Party who is neither in the Government nor in any Government job fails to get bail in a case involving few crores whereas granted bail on the ground that he can influence the witnesses but Rajiv Kumar a top police officer for whom the Chief Minister sits in a dharna gets bail on assumption that he cannot influence witnesses.”
The Court has however forbidden Kumar from leaving Kolkata without permission and appears before the CBI whenever summoned and thecentral Agency has been directed to send him summons at least 48 hours ahead.