Saradha scam: Kumar surrenders before city court, granted bail

Appearing in public after nearly three weeks, former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar on Thursday surrendered before the Alipore Court here, which then granted him bail on two sureties of Rs 50,000 each in connection with the Saradha chit-fund scam case.

The Calcutta High Court had on Tuesday given anticipatory bail to Kumar, who is currently the additional director general of the West Bengal Criminal Investigation Department.

Observing that it was not an appropriate case for custodial interrogation, a division bench of the high court had said Kumar, if arrested by the Central Bureau of Investigation, would have to be released immediately on bail by an appropriate court on two sureties of Rs 50,000 each.

On Thursday, the senior IPS officer surrendered before Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate Subrata Mukherjee and was granted bail as per the high court order, his lawyer Gopal Haldar said.

The central agency officials had searched several places in and around Kolkata over the past three weeks to locate Kumar, who had gone untraceable after a single bench of the high court on September 13 vacated its interim order granting Kumar protection from arrest.

The Saradha group of companies allegedly duped lakhs of people to the tune of Rs 2,500 crore, promising higher rates of return on their investments.

The IPS officer was part of the Special Investigation Team set up by the Bengal government to investigate the scam, before the Supreme Court handed over the case to CBI in 2014, along with other chit-fund cases.

The scam was unearthed in 2013 during Kumar's tenure as Bidhannagar police commissioner.

In February, Kumar was questioned by CBI in connection with the case for over five days in Shillong on a Supreme Court order.