Mamata has 'egg on her face' with SC ruling: says Smriti Irani

Union Minister Smriti Irani slammed West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, saying the Trinamool Congress supremo had "egg on her face" following Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling directing Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar to appear before the CBI in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam.

Addressing a press conference here, Union Minister Smriti Irani said: "The political histrionics of Mamata Banerjee was brought to screeching halt by the Supreme Court. The political environment in West Bengal is not suitable. The Supreme Court gave its judgement keeping that in mind and directed Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar to present himself in Shillong."

 

She added: "There exists a state of lawlessness in West Bengal, the anarchist Chief Minister intervened in the process of collection of evidence by officers, upon whose instructions officers were heckled, manhandled and detained, their families harassed, their homes surrounded."

The Union Minister said that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) welcomed the judgement by the Supreme Court in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) vs Mamata Banerjee-led government in West Bengal.

BJP leader Irani also claimed that there were differences between the call records of suspects and evidence given by West Bengal Police and what the CBI accessed in the Saradha chit fund scam.

"Call records of suspects and evidence given by West Bengal Police -- there were differences in them," she said.

Irani said: "With egg on her face, to celebrate it as a moral victory is a dichotomy that is only available in the realms of Mamata Banerjee's politics."

The Supreme Court directed Kolkata Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar to appear before the CBI in connection with the Saradha chit fund scam and also said that no coercive step should be taken against Kumar who will now appear before the CBI in Shillong in Meghalaya.

The Supreme Court, which posted further hearing in the case to February 20, also issued a contempt notice to the West Bengal Chief Secretary, the DGP and the Kolkata Police Commissioner on a plea which said that a CBI team was detained when it went to question Kumar on Sunday.

The Supreme Court's directions came a day after the CBI approached it to complain that Kumar, a senior IPS officer, was not cooperating in the probe into the chit fund scam which being monitored by the top court.

An attempt by the CBI to question Kumar at his residence in Kolkata on Sunday was foiled by the local police which detained the team of the central investigative agency for some time.

The CBI, in an affidavit filed in the Supreme Court, alleged that there were several incriminating materials or correspondence in the Saradha chit fund case that were collected during the investigation by the CBI against the senior police officials as well as senior politicians.

The CBI affidavit states that the investigation was being done by SIT and crucial evidence such as laptops, mobile phones among others were handed over to the main accused in Saradha scam case by the investigating officer of West Bengal police working under direct supervision of Rajeev Kumar.

The affidavit further states that return of crucial evidence to main accused by the SIT, despite regular monitoring by Calcutta High Court, clearly show connivance of SIT to a larger conspiracy wherein local authorities obstructed probe and attempted to destroy evidence prior to transfer of the case to CBI by the Supreme Court.

The CBI is investigating this case under a "hostile environment and non-cooperation from the state of West Bengal and it's agencies/departments", the petition said.

Rajeev Kumar, a 1989-batch IPS officer, has been serving as Kolkata's police commissioner since January 2016. He has reportedly not responded summons from the CBI in connection with their probes into the Rose Valley and Saradha ponzi scams.

Kumar 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 reportedly went missing.