The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday examined Villupuram Superintendent of Police S. Jayakumar and the then Assistant Director, Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence, S.K. Sharon, in connection with the gutkha scam.
The questioning of Mr. Jayakumar, who earlier served as the Deputy Commissioner of Police, Central Crime Branch, Chennai, comes days after former Police Commissioner S. George, arraigned in the gutkha case, sought to blame him for not bringing the scam to his notice.
In 2014 when Mr. Jayakumar was the DCP in the CCB, a team raided a factory in Sothupakkam near Red Hills and seized two lorry loads of the banned gutkha. The seizure was neither brought on record or a case registered for further investigation. The team members, including some in the rank of Inspector of Police, gave statements to the Directorate of Vigilance and Anti-Corruption confirming the sequence of events , the police said on Thursday.
The allegation is that the huge consignment of seized gutkha was given to officials of the Department of Food Safety who later destroyed it near Moolakadai. “But there is no record of that in the police files. The CBI has now accessed the statements of the CCB that participated in the raid,” a police officer who was privy to the investigation told The Hindu .
Investigators are trying to check who gave the information on the gutkha factory, whether the CCB team had the Police Commissioner’s permission and on whose instructions the seized material was transferred, the sources said.
