CBI officers’ mass transfers lead to speculation on possible shift of joint director Pankaj Srivastava from Kolkata

Six senior officers of the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probing the most talked-about cases in West Bengal – the Saradha, Rose Valley and the Narada – having been transferred in January 2020, there are now speculations over possible transfer of the agency’s joint director in Kolkata region, Pankaj Srivastava.

In early January, 19 officers, including two DIGs and 14 SPs were transferred from across the country. According to a new policy of the Central investigating agency, no officer would be posted in a particular position for more than five years.

Among these transfers was Deputy Inspector General Abhay Singh from the CBI’s Special Crime Branch in Kolkata who was shifted to its Economic Offences Wing in Delhi. Also transferred was Superintendent of Police Partha Mukherjee, whose Economic Offices IV in Kolkata, was probing the chit fund cases. He was transferred to the CBI headquarters as additional inspector general (policy).

In mid-January, four more officers were transferred from Kolkata – out of them three were deputy superintendents of police and one inspector – all of them involved in the investigations into the Saradha, Rose Valley and Narada cases.

The four officers transferred were deputy superintendent of police Ranjit Kumar (who was probing Narada), DSP Tathagata Bardhan (probing Saradha scam) and DSP Chojom Sherpa (investigating Rose Valley scam) and Inspector Bratin Ghoshal (who was earlier probing Rose Valley). Kumar and Bardhan were transferred to New Delhi, Sherpa to Bhubaneswar.

Some officers said this was a “routine” transfer while others indicated that this was part of a “mass transfer” and the reason was not very clear.

Pankaj Srivastava has not completed five years in the position, but there are talks that a new officer may be brought in his place. One of the reasons is that officers during probe generally like to form a “team”, and with some officers transferred elsewhere, the top brass in Delhi may wish to form a new team including a new chief. However, significantly, some officers indicated that the probes have slowed down over the past few months. Officers compared the situation now to what it was like a little less than a year ago.

A CBI team had reached the house of the then Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar who, various news reports mentioned as “absconding” and “being looked for” and that he was facing “arrest”, quoting CBI sources. The Times of India reported “CBI: Kolkata Police chief diluted chit fund scam cases, is absconding, faces arrest”, in which it was said that “The Central Bureau of Investigation claimed on Saturday that Kolkata Police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, a 1989 batch IPS officer, is ‘absconding’ and is ‘being looked for’ for his role in going slow or diluting the SIT probe in multi-crore Saradha and Rose Valley Ponzi scams.”

The report quoted CBI sources to say that “Kumar is a ‘suspect’ in the chit fund probes” and that “Rajeev Kumar faces ‘imminent arrest’ by CBI”. Kolkata Police authorities though, had said that Kumar was not missing.

A team of CBI officers who reached the door of Kumar’s official residence on Park Street were not allowed to go inside by Kolkata Police officers, and chief minister Mamata Banerjee subsequently went on a dharna on Metro Channel in Kolkata for “saving democracy, Constitution and the country”.

Officers indicated that the CBI top bosses in Delhi are not quite happy with the way the probes have been going on in Rose Valley, Saradha and Narada in the recent past.

M Nageswara Rao, the then interim CBI chief along with joint director Pankaj Srivastava were the officers in charge in January and February 2019, when the CBI team went outside Kumar’s residence.

In fact, M Nageswara Rao – under whose instruction officers landed at the doorstep of the the Kolkata police commissioner to “interrogate” him – has links with a company whose offices the city police authorities had raided earlier. The company with its office in Kolkata had several financial transactions with Rao’s wife and daughter. While Rao had defended these transactions, a section of officers argued that the CBI team landing up outside Kumar’s residence may have some link with the Kolkata Police probing the company.

Rao is no longer with the CBI, and Tathagata Bardhan who was directly probing the Saradha scam and was himself present in the team that reached outside Kumar’s residence, is among the officers who have been transferred out of Kolkata. This is yet another reason many insiders feel that there is a possibility of Srivastava too being transferred out of the CBI’s Kolkata region.