Kolkata: Amid a time when the Calcutta High Court is almost every day ordering Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probes in some case or the other in West Bengal, the joint director in charge of the agency’s anti-corruption wing, Pankaj Srivastava has been shifted out of Kolkata to New Delhi.
Srivastava will be replaced by N. Venu Gopal, a 1995 batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer of the Himachal Pradesh cadre.
The decision has come as a surprise since Srivastava was in the overall charge of all the cases involving financial embezzlement like chit funds, Narada video tape scam, cattle and coal smuggling and most importantly, the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) recruitment irregularities scam.
However, highly-placed CBI sources said that despite being shifted to New Delhi, Srivastava will be overseeing the probe in the chit fund cases. Venugopal will be handling the other cases relating to financial embezzlement and will be operating from CBI’s Nizam Palace office in central Kolkata.
The CBI sources said that Srivastava, a 1992 batch IPS officer of Madhya Pradesh cadre, was appointed as the agency’s Joint Director, Kolkata Zone for a period of five years and that tenure has ended, so he has been transferred.
In February 2019, it was Srivastava who has served notice to then Kolkata Police Commissioner, Rajeev Kumar in connection with the Saradha chit fund, which resulted into a major faceoff between the Union and the state government. Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee staged dharna on the streets of Kolkata then after a team of CBI officers reached the residence of Kumar.
–IANS
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