Kolkata: The high-voltage West Bengal Assembly elections are round the corner. And as crunch time arrives, the Saradha ponzi scam is back once more to haunt Mamata Banerjee and her government. No doubt, this scam will play an influential role in deciding the fate of Mamata Banerjee and the Trinamool Congress.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) filed a fresh appeal Saturday in the Supreme Court. The CBI is seeking to quiz ex-Kolkata Police top cop Rajiv Kumar in connection with the case. Kumar was the then police commissioner of Bidhannagar Commissionerate when the multi-crore chitfund scam was busted in 2013. He also headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by the West Bengal government.
Later, the high-profile case was handed over to the CBI in 2014 under the direction of the Supreme Court. Kumar is known to be a close confidant of Banerjee. He was granted anticipatory bail from the Calcutta High Court on the matter. The court said that it was not an appropriate case for custodial interrogation. In an unprecedented standoff, when a CBI team had gone to question Kumar at his official residence here, they were detained by the city police officers.
“The investigation is on. The agency will do everything that is required to nail the offenders. It’s a big scam,” a senior CBI official told this news agency Sunday from Delhi.
Saradha chit fund kingpin Sudipto Sen is still now behind bars. He has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Banerjee pointing out the fact that leaders who allegedly took ‘financial advantages’ from him are now switching over to the BJP in Bengal. The list included names of some senior political leaders of the CPI (M), BJP, Congress and the Trinamool Congress. Sen has also requested the CBI and the state police to take necessary action against them.
According to sources, the BJP would make attempts to corner the incumbent Trinamool Congress government in Bengal. The Saradha scam is one of the key political issues for the saffron brigade to target Banerjee and her party on grounds of corruptions. “The state government is trying to shield Kumar from the CBI interrogation. He knows many things. They have left no stone unturned so that the cat doesn’t come out of the bag,” a top BJP leader said Sunday.
Besides the Saradha scam, the CBI is also carrying out probes on illegal coal mining and cattle smuggling in West Bengal. These are allegedly being run in connivance with the state administration and many ruling party leaders. The CBI’s anti-corruption branch last month had conducted a marathon raid in as many as 30 different locations in West Bengal in connection with a coal-smuggling racket.