The Supreme Court on Friday rejected the CBI’s appeal against Rajeev Kumar, Bengal’s director general of police (DGP) of police, in the Saradha case.
Six years after Kumar dodged the CBI bullet in the Saradha case, it had returned to chase him in the last lap of his illustrious career.
For more than six years now the CBI had been trying to nail Kumar in the Saradha scam. The charges against the DGP included tampering of evidence in the multi-crore Ponzi-scheme scam from over a decade ago.
Among the run-ins that the Bidhannagar police, then headed by Kumar as the Kolkata suburb’s commissioner of police, included denying an Enforcement Directorate (ED) team access to a locker designated to the wife of the Saradha group chief, Sudipto Sen.
From the early months of 2019, Kumar first as the chief of Kolkata Police and later ADG (CID) managed to give the slip to the CBI sleuths. Chief minister Mamata Banerjee, who had declared Kumar “the best police officer in the world”, led a sit-in protest in Kolkata’s Metro Channel against the CBI six years ago.
“For whatever reasons, after September 2019 the case never came up. Politically, too, the BJP did not rake up the issue before either the 2021 Assembly polls or the 2024 Lok Sabha polls,” said a retired IPS officer from the Bengal cadre.
Kumar, a 1989-cadre officer, is scheduled to retire in early 2026. Unlike in the past, when Mamata had been proactive in throwing the shield around Kumar and also made him DGP bypassing the Union Public Service Commission and its norm, is likely to have made up her mind against giving any extension to him.
“The shortlisted candidates have to fill an elaborate form which includes a column on criminal cases. Had he filled that form, UPSC would never have given its seal of approval,” said a source in the state secretariat.
According to the grapevine, the chief minister and her most trusted lieutenant in the state administration had a falling out, the reason for which is not clear.
There is buzz that Kumar had suggested the arrest of Trinamool’s Birbhum strongman, Anubrata Mondal, who was recorded abusing the mother and wife of the officer-in-charge of the Bolpur police station.
“There was widespread resentment among the inspectors and sub-inspectors,” said a police source. “The DGP had suggested Mondal be arrested even if for a day only to assuage the force. The CM promptly shot it down and made it clear that if that indeed happened she would not take much time to change the top cop.”
In the first week of September, when the chief minister was at the state police headquarters in Bhabani Bhawan, the DGP is reported to have praised a young IPS officer before the CM, where at least three other senior officers were present. Mamata reportedly snubbed the DGP’s recommendations.
“The chief minister is well aware he won’t be around to help her during the elections. Even if he had not retired, the Election Commission would have removed him. She is preparing the ground for running the administration beyond Kumar,” said a senior official who did not want to be named for obvious reasons.
Kumar’s connection with Bengal, where he has served for his entire career, is unlikely to be snapped soon. His wife, Sanchita Kumar, a former Indian Revenue Service officer, is one of the information commissioners in Bengal.