Solicitor General Tushar informed the Supreme Court that Kolkata Police had fiddled with the investigation into the Saradha chit fund scam. He is now expected to produce the evidence and explain why the CBI waited for five years before raising the issue.

In July last year the CBI had complained to the Supreme Court that the state government was not cooperating with it. And the apex court had directed them to reach out the Calcutta High Court in future in case of non-cooperation. There is nothing to suggest it did.

West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee on the other hand maintains that CBI landing up at the residence of the Calcutta Police Commissioner Rajeev Kumar on a Sunday evening, had transgressed constitutional and legal boundaries .

K Ragothaman, the CBI’s former chief investigating officer, believes the Bureau is at fault in going to the police commissioner’s office without a warrant, as he told Rediff.com in an interview, but the issue is way more complex than that.

Did the CBI have the legal wherewithal to question Kumar in light of the West Bengal government’s November 2018 decision to withdraw permission to the agency in probing cases in the state (which the Left Front government had granted in 1989)

Police and public order are ‘State Subjects’ in the Constitution, ie, state governments run police forces in their respective states and the Centre cannot interfere. The CBI, however, is an agency that was created by the DSPE Act, a Central law. As a result, it can only operate in any other state if it has the consent of the relevant state government, according to Section 6 of the Delhi Special Police Establishment Act, the law that governs the functioning of the CBI.

In the Major E.G.Barsay case of 1961, the Supreme Court upheld Section 6, ruling that no member of the CBI can exercise powers and jurisdiction in any area in a state without the consent of the respective state government. In the same case, the court held that the issue of withdrawal of consent by states can judicially be reviewed. Besides, withdrawal of consent is no bar for a court to order a CBI probe.

The CBI has been investigating the Saradha scam after the Supreme Court transferred the case to it in the Subrata Chattoraj versus Union of India judgment on May 9, 2014. In that case, the court, led by a bench of former CJI T.S. Thakur, had held without casting any aspersions on the capability of the West Bengal police, that Saradha case allegations, which transcended different state boundaries, required a probe by the central agency.