As an institution, the CBI, the nation’s top investigative agency, must find itself in an extremely awkward situation. While its director, Ranjit Sinha, is leading the investigation in two high-profile cases, the 2G spectrum scam and the coal blocks allocation irregularities, which had not a little to do with placing question marks against the UPA-2 government, the Supreme Court earlier this week asked Mr Sinha to respond within 10 days to serious allegations made against him personally.
Activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan, arguing a petition for an NGO, had demanded that a SIT be constituted to probe the CBI director for protecting the accused in the “Coalgate” affair. Mr Bhushan also asked that the CBI chief recuse himself from the investigation in coal-related cases.
The Supreme Court bench led by Chief Justice R.M. Lodha didn’t concede the wishes of the NGO’s counsel either on the matter of a SIT probe or recusal of the CBI director. But it appears the court has been swayed enough by the nature of the allegations to ask Mr Sinha to respond to them.
The principal allegation against Mr Sinha is that he has been permitting scores of people associated with the issue of coal blocks allocation, many of whom are accused in those cases, to visit him at his official residence. Exactly the same charge was laid at Mr Sinha’s door by the same counsel in the 2G spectrum case.
Mr Bhushan has spoken of the existence of an official entry register at the CBI chief’s residence, which became the basis of his allegations. Mr Sinha first sought to deny the existence of such a logbook, and then agreed it was possible that police personnel on duty kept an informal document. He also sought to maintain that as the administrative officer in the investigations in question, he was not straying from duty in meeting the accused at his residence, which also doubled as a temporary office.
All of this appears to be in the nature of a technical ballast to support the CBI chief in the face of fairly serious allegations. When large numbers of high-wealth individuals being subject of investigations monitored by the Supreme Court were seeing the CBI director on a frequent basis, as appears to have been the case, Mr Sinha may have been well-advised to keep the Supreme Court in the picture.
Not doing so raises needless questions, including those which relate to corruption as well as impartiality of the probe, that is linked to matters of policy. While a finger is pointing at the head of the CBI, and this may render him ineffective, he could offer to dissociate himself from the controversial cases without accepting culpability in any way.
