SC rejects CBI probe into wife-swapping complaint

New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Thursday while cautioning the High Courts from ordering CBI probe mechanically, rejected the plea of Sujatha Ravi Kiran of Kochi seeking a CBI probe into the charges of wife swapping and sexual abuse against her husband, Ravi Kiran and others.

A Bench of Chief Justice T.S. Thakur and Justices R. Banumathi and Uday Lalit also dismissed her plea to transfer the pending criminal case from a Kochi court to a court in Delhi.  The Bench, however, directed the Kerala government to constitute a  special  team  of police officers headed by an officer not below the rank of Deputy  Inspector General of Police to investigate the matter. The petitioner Sujatha in her complaint  had made allegations of  wife-swapping  and  also  implicated few names.

The Bench said that before parting with the case, we deem it necessary to  emphasise that despite wide powers conferred by Articles 32 and 226 of  the  Constitution, while passing any order, the Courts must bear in mind certain  self-imposed limitations on the  exercise  of  these  constitutional  powers.

The very plenitude of the power under the said Articles  requires  great  caution  in its exercise.  Insofar as the question of issuing  a  direction  to  CBI  to conduct investigation in   a  case  is  concerned,  although  no  inflexible guidelines can be laid down to decide whether or not such  power  should  be exercised but time and again it has been reiterated that such  an  order  is not to be passed as a matter of  routine  or  merely  because  a  party  has levelled some allegations.