CBI seeks warrant for Rajeev Kumar's arrest, court reserves judgement on plea

A city court on Thursday reserved its order on CBI's plea seeking warrant for arresting former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar in the Saradha chit fund case. The Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate (ACJM), Alipore, reserved the order on the prayer after submissions by the lawyers of CBI and Kumar, who is currently the additional director general of West Bengal CID.

In its submission, the agency claimed that the senior IPS officer has failed to appear before it for assisting in the chit fund scam probe, despite notices being sent to him on multiple occasions. Kumar is not cooperating in the probe, the CBI lawyers told ACJM Subrata Mukherjee.

They claimed that Kumar has been avoiding appearance before the CBI officers by citing frivolous reasons, seeking more time to visit the agency's office at Salt Lake here. The CBI lawyers cited previous judgements by different courts in support of their prayer, including one in which the agency had got an arrest warrant against absconding underworld don Dawood Ibrahim.

Kumar's lawyers said the order relating to Dawood, one of the country's most-wanted fugitives, did not apply in this case. The senior IPS officer is a witness and not an accused, and as such the court cannot issue an arrest warrant against him in the case, his lawyers told the court.

Denying the charge that he was not cooperating with the probe, they claimed that Kumar is not absconding and had informed the CBI about his unavailability from September 1 to 25. The Saradha chit fund case was registered at the Alipore court in South 24 Parganas district.

On September 17, Kumar had moved the Barasat District and Sessions Court, seeking anticipatory bail but failed to get any relief. The sessions judge had disposed of Kumar's anticipatory bail plea and said it has no jurisdiction in the matter, as the multi-crore chitfund scam case was registered at the Alipore district court.

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