Calcutta High Court on Monday rejected a bail plea by Sujit Mandal, a bodyguard of former West Midnapore police chief Bharati Ghosh, in an extortion case in which the former IPS officer is also an accused.

Public prosecutor Saswata Gopal Mukherjee claimed that when Mandal was absconding and said to be staying in Mumbai before his arrest, he had tried to tamper with evidence.

Mandal was taken into custody seven months ago on charges of assisting the former SP in the alleged crimes. A division bench of Justice Sanjib Banerjee and Justice Suvra Ghosh rejected Mandal’s bail plea after going through the case dairy.

The same bench had last week turned down a plea by Bharati’s husband M. A. V. Raju to relax bail conditions so that he could travel out of Bengal for professional work as a chartered accountant. He had been arrested after alleged recovery of unaccounted cash.