The attack on Enforcement Directorate officials in West Bengal while on a raid is not an isolated incident but a years-old pattern, say bureaucrats who have served in the TMC-ruled state. They add the key is to support the central agency officers who operate in a very hostile Bengal environment. Like Mamata Banerjee who fully supports officers loyal to her.
Bengal police personnel ferociously knocked the doors of the official residence of the then CBI joint director in Kolkata, Pankaj Srivastava when a CBI team landed at the residence of then Kolkata police commissioner Rajiv Kumar who is now Bengal police chief in 2019. A timely intervention from the centre due to the involvement of IB and BSF officials posted in Kolkata, helped to diffuse the situation then.
But, later Srivastava, who despite being credited with building evidence-based chargesheets in the chit-fund scam cases, was not even promoted as additional director general or ADG at the centre due to inexplicable reasons. Srivastava has returned to his parent cadre of Madhya Pradesh after completing his central deputation tenure and last week, he was appointed ADG-Special Task Force in MP.
