We know about the CBI’s past flip flops in the Supreme Court while filing status reports on investigation into alleged disproportionate assets of two UP political heavyweights – Mulayam Singh Yadav and Mayawati.
The CBI’s status reports waxed and waned depending on seasonal political expediencies directly linked to the UPA government’s need for the support of Samajwadi Party and Bahujan Samaj Party in Lok Sabha.
But the coal scam investigation status report, submitted in a sealed cover to the Supreme Court on March 8, was quite different.
The coal scam, if one believed the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG), was much more devastating to the country’s economy than the 2G spectrum scam.
Despite the magnitude of the alleged irregularities in coal block allocations and the seriousness expressed by the Supreme Court in getting to the bottom of it, law minister Ashwani Kumar without any supervisory control over the agency audaciously summoned the probe status report for vetting before its presentation to the highest court.
The crime was aggravated when the CBI, through additional solicitor general Harin Raval, lied to the Supreme Court that the probe report was never shared with the political executive.
But the gravest of the series of blunders came when it was suggested to the CBI director to file an affidavit informing the court that it was not vetted by the political executive. CBI director Ranjit Kumar Sinha, however, refused to lie to the court and run the risk of perjury.
Right from British days, the political executive has had an irresistible desire to tinker with everything and tailor it to their needs.
We had been told by historians how in 1775, then governor general Warren Hastings brought false forger0y charges against Raja Nandkumar and then colluded with chief justice Elijah Impey to get the accused hanged on cooked up charges.
Yet, the political class also desires that everyone should view them as fair, just, benevolent and honest. It is this double-face which came for scrutiny in the Supreme Court during the hearing on a PIL filed by Vineet Narain in the 1990s.
In 1993, the Centre had appointed a committee headed by former home secretary N N Vohra to take stock of all information about activities of crime syndicates/mafia organizations which had links with and were being protected by bureaucrats, police and politicians.
The court also realized that the mafia and crime syndicates thrived because of the reluctance of law enforcing agencies – police, CBI and Enforcement Directorate -- to act against them because they feared retributive action from the political executive.
As a first step, the court had desired to free the investigating agencies from the clutches of political executives, but the then attorney general put up a caveat in the form of a note from an individual Union Cabinet minister.
The minister had requested the court to keep in mind the fact that “ultimate responsibility for functioning of these agencies to the Parliament is that of the concerned minister”.
The court said it had never intended to dilute the in-charge minister’s general power to review working of the agencies and give broad policy directions regarding their functioning.
“However, all the powers of the minister are subject to the condition that none of them would extend to permit the minister to interfere with the course of investigation and prosecution in any individual case and in that respect the concerned officers are to be governed entirely by the mandate of the law and statutory duty cast upon them,” the court had said.
Interestingly, the same year, in the Bihar fodder scam case judgment [Union of India vs Sushil Kumar Modi 1997 (4) SCC 770], the Supreme Court had asked the investigating agencies, including the CBI, to bear in mind the caution administered by Lord Denning in R vs Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1968 (1) AER 769 QB 118].
Indicating what should be the duty of commissioner of police, Lord Denning had said, “I have no hesitation in holding that like every constable in the land, he should be and is, independent of the executive. He is not subject to the orders of secretary of state (in Indian context the home minister).”
Lord Denning demarcated the roles of the political executive and the law enforcing agencies and said, “No minister of the Crown can tell him that he must, or must not, keep observation on this place or that; or that he must, or must not prosecute this man or that one.
Nor can any political authority tell him so. The responsibility for law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to law and to the law alone.”
The Supreme Court of India fully agreed with Lord Denning and said, “There can hardly be any doubt that the obligation of our police in our constitutional scheme is no less. The minister’s power in these matters has, therefore, to be understood as circumscribed by the limitations under the law.”
The CBI director, the additional solicitor general or the political executive may or may not face the music in the Supreme Court on April 30 for dealing the way they did with the coal scam investigation report.
But police chiefs and heads of the CBI and Enforcement Directorate must be proud enough men to heed Lord Denning and the Supreme Court’s advice. Only then can we see the back of mafia and crime syndicates broken.
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