Former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar appointed as new Bengal DGP

In February 2019, CM Banerjee sat on a two-day dharna after a Central Bureau of Investigation team officers reached officer Rajeev Kumar’s house to question him in an alleged chit-fund scam case

Former Kolkata police commissioner Rajeev Kumar was on Wednesday appointed as the new director general of police (DGP) of West Bengal.

Senior IPS officer Rajeev Kumar was on Wednesday appointed as the new director general of police of West Bengal (Twitter Photo)

A notification issued by the state home department stated that Kumar, a 1989 batch IPS officer, will hold the charge of director general and inspector general of police of West Bengal until further orders. Manoj Malaviya, the present DGP, retired on Wednesday.

Known to be close to chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Kumar earlier served as the chief of Kolkata Police and Bidhannagar Police. He had also headed the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), Special Task Force (STF) and currently serves as the principal secretary of the department of information technology and electronics.

In February 2019, CM Banerjee sat on a two-day dharna after a Central Bureau of Investigation team reached Kumar’s house to question him in an alleged chit-fund scam case. She called off the demonstration after the Supreme Court granted him protection from arrest by the federal agency.

The CBI had alleged in the apex court that Kumar tampered with electronic evidence of the Saradha chit-fund scam. The case involved an estimated Rs.2,460 crore that was raised from around 1.8 million depositors from West Bengal, Assam, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Chhattisgarh. It came to light in 2012 when depositors started filing police complaints.

Later in 2019, in a major bureaucratic reshuffle, the West Bengal government posted Kumar as the state IT secretary.