The Central Bureau of Investigation is drawing flak for dropping the name of former deputy police commissioner (Headquarters) Gyanwant Singh from the list of accused in the murder of graphic designer Rizwanur Rehman. CBI sources said the newly-appointed director of the agency, Ashwani Kumar, has rapped some officers in Kolkata in this regard.

Sources said some CBI officials, probing the Rehman case, were reportedly lenient towards the accused police officers. “Singh was named in the chargesheet several times but his name did not figure in the list of the accused,” said a CBI official. “If Ajay Kumar and the other two officers can be accused of abetting Rehman’s suicide, then Singh should also be held responsible,” he added.

CBI lawyers in Kolkata have recently sent a letter to Kumar, pointing at the anomaly. “The letter says that the CBI advocates believed that Singh should not have been left out from the list of the accused,” said a source in the CBI legal cell. Sources said some CBI officers were also not happy that senior CBI prosecutor Partha Tapaswi had opposed the bail petition of the three police officers— former Deputy Commissioner (Detective Department) Ajay Kumar, Assistant Commissioner Sukanti Chakraborty, Sub-Inspector Krishnendu Das— on September 27. “Some CBI officers had called us several times and asked why we were opposing the bail petition,” said the source in CBI legal cell.

Many trace this lenient attitude of the Central agency to the meeting of former Kolkata police commissioner Kolkata Prasun Kumar with the then CBI Director, Vijay Shankar, on October 10, 2007. “The two are very good friends and are from the same IPS batch of 1973-74. Prasun had reportedly requested the CBI to be soft towards the accused police officers,” the source said.

... contd.