“Moral Victory,” Claim Both Centre, Mamata Banerjee In Order On Top Cop

Lauding the Supreme Court’ verdict directing that Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar cannot be arrested by the CBI, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said on Tuesday it is a moral victory.

But in what the central government described as a “moral victory for the CBI”, the court has ordered Mr Kumar to appear on February 20 before the investigating agency in Shillong in Meghalaya, submit all evidence and cooperate with the probe into chit fund scams in Bengal.

“Only the people and nobody is the big boss of this country… Only democracy is the big boss of this country,” Mamata Banerjee told reporters from the site where she has been protesting since Sunday. She added: “It is not my victory alone. It is a victory of the constitution, a victory of Save India.”

The confrontation between Mamata Banerjee and the ruling BJP at the centre began on Sunday evening after a CBI team that tried to question Rajeev Kumar was detained by the Kolkata Police for a few hours.

Asked about the top court’s direction asking Kumar to appear before the CBI, she said, “Rajeev never stated that he will not cooperate (in the probe into the Saradha chit fund scam). He wanted to meet at a neutral place, but the CBI came to arrest him from his residence without any notice on Sunday.”

Kumar, a 1989-batch IPS officer, has been serving as Kolkata’s police commissioner since January 2016. He has reportedly not responded to summonses from the CBI in connection with its probes into the Rose Valley and Sarada ponzi scams.

He led the SIT investigation into the scams until 2014 when the agency took over following directions from the Supreme Court. The CBI was slated to question Kumar about documents that allegedly went missing.