The Supreme Court has taken a balanced, yet restrained, view of the shameful drama that unfolded in Kolkata since Sunday following a CBI attempt to force its entry to the official residence of Kolkata Police Commissioner, Rajeev Kumar. By asking the top cop to appear before the CBI for investigations into the Saradha and Rose Valley chit fund scam, in which several close chums of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee are involved, the court backed the CBI. By fixing Shillong as the venue for the meet, the court has also given an ear to the Commissioner’s posturing that he cannot report to the CBI in Kolkata.
The matter would come up for detailed hearing again on February 20, by which time the state has to explain to the court about the obstructions caused to the CBI by the police and the Chief Minister herself — who went to the extreme of rounding up and detaining the team of CBI officials.
Dirty politics was seen at its worst in Kolkata and the fresh damage it caused to the CBI as also the federal structure of the nation is immense. The CM exceeded her brief. Here is a senior cop who headed the Special Investigation Team (SIT) that probed the chit fund scam and is accused of hiding vital, incriminating information including recordings in a pen drive and a “red diary”. That he has evaded CBI summons for the past two years is itself a violation of law. Yet, the way the CBI slept over the matter so far is a sad commentary on its style of functioning. If a summons is defied repeatedly, arrest follows.
The street-smart chief minister would need to explain why she has gone this far in the case of a police official, while she chose to remain silent when several of her party leaders including ministers were set upon by the CBI in the past in connection with this case. It shows that she feared the outcome in an interrogation of the Commissioner. The obvious inspiration for this high-voltage drama, which raised serious questions about the federal structure of the nation and the Constitutional provisions thereof might also be an attempt by the CM to promote her image in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls. It’s no secret that she wants herself to be the fulcrum around which the Opposition should rally round, so as to enable her to stake claim to be the next PM. But, she has gone too far. National interests are at stake.