No more Rose Valley proof left to share, Calcutta police tell ED... Response follows stand-off between Bengal government and the Centre over CBI’s attempt to question Rajeev Kumar

ED officers to write to the Bengal government and request it to restrain the police from making comments on the Rose Valley probe : (Prem Singh)

Kinsuk Basu, TT, 7 February 2019, Calcutta: Calcutta police reportedly informed the Enforcement Directorate on Wednesday that they had nothing much to share about the Rose Valley probe with the central agency, drawing curtains on the ED’s effort to know more about the findings of Lalbazar in the earlier investigation into the multi-crore scam.

The response comes within days of a stand-off between the Bengal government and the Centre over the CBI’s attempt to question city police commissioner Rajeev Kumar over deposit defaults.

The ED had written to Bengal home secretary Atri Bhattacharya around a month ago, seeking details of what the Calcutta police claimed they had found from their investigation into the Rose Valley case. The letter came in the wake of the police reportedly writing to the ED asking what it was doing about its ongoing probe into the multi-crore Rose Valley scam, sources in the ED said.

On Wednesday, two senior IPS officers of the Calcutta police sent their replies in sealed envelopes through “carriers” to the Salt Lake office of the ED, saying they had nothing much to share in the Rose Valley case.

Surprised by the response, sources said, ED officers would write to the Bengal government and request it to restrain the police from making comments on the ongoing Rose Valley probe.

“The response of the two officers is bewildering. One of them said he had heard about some hawala channel that was being used by some Rose valley firms to transfer money. The other said he had submitted his findings to a joint police commissioner of Calcutta police, whom he reports to,” said an ED officer.

“We are not sure why the police had to claim they had found several materials suggesting money trail during their probe into the Rose valley scam.”