Supreme Court to hear CBI plea on Kolkata cops today

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Monday, while agreeing to hear on Tuesday the CBI’s application, orally observed that it would “come down heavily” on the Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar if there are materials to show that he was destroying electronic evidence in the Saradha scam probe.

When Solicitor General Tushar Mehta pressed for an urgent hearing at 2 pm on Monday itself, the CJI Ranjan Gogoi said “We have gone through your application there is nothing in it remotely suggesting that you have apprehensions of evidence being destroyed. If you had some material evidence that the commissioner of police was even remotely thinking of destroying evidence, we will come down so heavily on him, he will regret it.”

The CBI filed two applications seeking contempt action against the state government and direction to the police commissioner to “surrender” and extend all cooperation to the investigating agency.

At the outset, Mr Tushar Mehta, appearing for CBI called the police commissioner Rajeev Kumar as a “potential accused”, which is contrary to the CBI’s official claim that it wants to question the police chief as a witness in the case. He said that an “extraordinary situation” has unfolded in the state of Bengal where the CBI officers had been held captive by the local police and the “constitutional machinery had broken down in the state. We apprehend that electronic evidence might be destroyed.”

CJI Gogoi, while agreeing to hear the case tomorrow, gave liberty to any person who can bring proof regarding the allegation of destruction of evidence.

The  Solicitor-General  said “We issued four summons to the police commissioner who is a potential accused, he didn’t respond.”