Senior police officer under scanner in Matang case

After Anil Goswami was sacked as Union home secretary, the role of a senior Indian Police Service officer in a para-military force has come under scanner for allegedly attempting to influence the Central Bureau of Investigation not to arrest Matang Sinh in the Saradha case.

A report about the conduct of the IPS officer, brought to the Centre by Goswami, has been sent to the 'higher-ups' in the government, official sources said on Thursday.

The officer had initially "requested" the Central Bureau of Investigation team probing the multi-crore rupees Saradha chit fund scam to carry out questioning of Sinh, an accused in the case, in Delhi and not in Kolkata, the sources said.

Later, it is alleged that he had made another request not to arrest Sinh when the CBI had decided to take him into custody. Sinh, a former minister of state in the P V Narasimha Rao cabinet, was arrested by the CBI on Saturday.

The officer was hand-picked by Goswami who was shown the door on Thursday after the government decided to curtail his tenure by nearly five months in the wake of the controversy over his alleged attempt to stall the arrest of Sinh.

 At the instance of some politicians, Goswami had allegedly issued an order of shifting the officer from one para-military force to the other without taking any concurrence of the chiefs of either police force, the sources said.

The government is examining the report of the CBI amid speculation that the tenure of the IPS officer in the CBI may be cut short and shunted either back to the state from he was brought or shifted to some inconsequential post.

Image: Former Congress MP Matang Sinh. Photograph: PTI

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