BJP asks if Kolkata Police commissioner knows secrets, needs to be saved by Mamata

Taking aims at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee over the CBI probe into chit fund scams, the BJP Monday questioned if her dharna to protest action against Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar was because he held many "secrets" and needed to be saved.

Rejecting the opposition charge that the CBI's move to question Kumar amounted to an attack on the federal structure by the Modi government, BJP leader and Union minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said it cannot be cited as a shield to save the corrupt and asserted that the agency acted as per law.

Speaking to reporters, Prasad took a swipe at the unity among opposition parties against the CBI action, describing it as an "alliance of the corrupt", and said its "soldiers" from Bihar to Uttar Pradesh, including Congress president Rahul Gandhi, are facing probe in different cases of alleged graft.

Banerjee has defied all norms to sit in a dharna in Kolkata, he said, adding that the police commissioner's decision to join her protest was unprecedented and was in violation of norms guiding police officers' conduct.

He said Banerjee kept quiet when many of her Trinamool Congress leaders, including MPs, were arrested but has started a dharna to support a police officer.

It seems he knows a lot of secrets, Prasad said.

"These suspicious circumstances clearly indicate that the police commissioner knows a lot and therefore needed to be saved by the chief minister," he said.