A day after the CBI shifted four investigation officers (IOs) at one go in a major shake-up among the ranks of senior officers investigating the Saradha, Rose Valley and Narada cases, discontent appears to be simmering in the country’s premier probe agency, as the IO ( Investigation officer) in the Narada case has sent a note of “dissent” to the Delhi headquarters contesting the decision to shift him to Delhi and pleaded for a “rethink” on the decision taken.

Confirming the development, a source in the CBI, who is privy to the development, said that Ranjit Kumar, the investigation officer in the Narada scam, who along with the IOs (investigation officers) in the Saradha and Rose Valley ponzi cases had been shunted out of their posts in a rejig effected yesterday, voiced “dissent” today and sent a note to that effect to the agency’s Delhi headquarters expressing his “resentment” about the development, which he claimed would mar the prospect of a fair probe in the Narada pay-off case and prayed for a revisit of the decision.

In a letter addressed to the director CBI, Rishi Kumar Shukla, claimed the source, Mr Kumar wrote that the decision to shift him out of the ongoing probe in the Narada pay-off case as the IO, would scuttle the chances of a “fair probe” as during the course of investigation for so many years since the sting video scandal became public in 2016, many new clues and information reached their hands. Moreover, the investigation is at an advanced stage.

All the 13 accused named in the FIR had been investigated and their voice samples recorded. Those samples had been sent for forensic tests and the process was underway to file charge sheets very soon based on the tests’ results. Not only that, an IPS officer and the former police chief of Burdwan SMH Mirza was arrested and now in the CBI custody after his complicity in the scam was revealed. So, the decision to move him out of his present post could not have better timed, since the new officer would likely to find it hard to get a grip on the investigation since the likelihood of the witnesses getting hostile are also not ruled out, wrote the investigating officer, who is in the rank of DSP (Deputy superintendent of Police), in the Narada case, the source informed.

The CBI had shifted the four IOs – Tathagata Bardhan, Souzam Sherpa and Bratin Ghosal in Saradha, Rose Valley cases respectively and Ranjit Kumar in the Narada case, in what the agency said was a routine rejig.