Saradha scam: IPS officer grilled for 9 hours

Kolkata, May 30: Police officer Arnab Ghosh, one of the SIT members that initially probed the Saradha scam, was grilled for more than nine hours by the CBI on Wednesday over alleged suppression of evidence, sources said.

The Indian Police Service officer had been asked to face interrogation again on Thursday, sources in the probe agency told.

Ghosh had reached the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) office at the CGO complex in Salt Lake around 10 am after he was served summons. The interrogation continued late in the evening for more than nine hours, the sources said.

The officer was one of the members of the special investigation team (SIT), which was formed by West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee to probe the Saradha chit fund scam before the CBI began investigation at the orders of the Supreme Court in 2014.

The agency had issued a similar notice to former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar, who headed the SIT, to appear before it in connection with the ponzi scheme scam. Kumar is yet to respond to the summons.

The CBI had also grilled on Tuesday another officer of the SIT, Prabhakar Nath, who was then a subordinate of Ghosh.