Supreme Court withdraws arrest waiver given to ex-Kolkata top cop

NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Friday withdrew the interim protection from arrest granted to former Kolkata top cop Rajeev Kumar and asked the CBI, which had alleged that he was party to destroying evidence involving bigwigs in the state in the chit fund scam cases, to act as per law, setting the stage for a fresh round of shadow-boxing between the CBI and the state government.
The state government had resisted CBI’s attempts to interrogate the former cop and in-charge of the SIT probing the chit fund cases. A top court bench led by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had then directed the top cop to cooperate with the CBI probe, and Kumar was asked to answer questions regarding the probe in Shillong.

The CBI’s plea for custodial interrogation of Kumar to get to the bottom of things, including why the evidence in the case was handed back to the accused and why the complete call records of the accused were not handed over to the agency when it took over the probe from state police, were rejected for the time being.

In its final order on Friday, the top court withdrew the interim protection granted to Kumar and asked the CBI to act as per law. The bench said that it was giving seven days to the former top cop to seek appropriate relief such as anticipatory bail, which will lead to a fresh round of litigation.

Kumar may move the lower or the high court while the CBI will oppose the move. The bench, comprising justices Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna, acknowledged that a settlement is unlikely saying that they had tried to intervene to prevent a confrontation and clash between the CBI and the state police but had failed.