Bharati key aide flees from police custody

Kolkata: A key aide of retired IPS officer Bharati Ghosh, who is also a cop of the West Bengal Police, but under suspension now, fled from the custody of the Mumbai police under mysterious circumstances late on Friday night even after he was detained by the cops there on the intimation by the criminal investigation department (CID).

This has left the state detective agency furious as its team which had flew to Mumbai to arrest the accused: Sujit Mondal, a constable, had to return empty handed. Sujit was posted as the security personnel for the protection of Ms Ghosh when she was posted as superintendent of police (West Midnapore).

He was shown absconding in the chargesheet by the CID recently in a case of extortion alongwith Ms Ghosh and seven others including some police personnel also.

The complainant in the case is Chandan Majhi, a gold merchant who initially alleged of cheating by Bimal Gharai and others including some senior police officers.

The case started at the Daspur police station in West Midnapore on February 2 this year, after Ms Ghosh had tendered her resignation opting for voluntary retirement from service to protest her transfer from the district police head’s post to a post, which is considered of lesser importance.

On Saturday CID deputy inspector general (operations) Nishat Parvez said that on Friday evening Sujit Mondal was threatening a man called Swapan related to a vital witness in Mumbai to lodge a false complaint against Mr Majhi at the Lokmanya Tilak Marg police station in Mumbai.

It was further learnt, that Sujit might be physically present at the same police station and from there he was threatening Swapan that he would be implicated in a false case if he would not lodge a complaint against Mr Majhi, Mr Parvez added. He elaborated, “On receipt of the information, a request was made to detain Sujit immediately.”

Mr Parvez said, “A formal request was also sent soon. A team of CID led by Sankar Bhattacharyya rushed to Mumbai by flight on Friday night. After reaching there the team was informed that Sujit escaped from the Mumbai Police custody at around 11.10 pm. Search was made but nothing fruitful yielded.”

K09