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| May 29, 2000 | ||
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| CBI Zzz Files Tossed around by its political bosses, the country's top investigation agency finds its credibility on the wane even as it struggles to cope up with a logjam of pending cases By Farzand Ahmed
Indeed, the CBI has been far from expeditious in its functioning. More than 6,000 cases are pending trial, 220 of them for more than 20 years, in various courts while another 1,600 cases are still under investigation. That's not all. The quality of investigation has also declined, leading to more acquittals. Last year, only 58 per cent of the cases ended in conviction against 67 per cent in 1997. Noting that this had dented the bureau's credibility, the committee wanted the Government to "take measures to infuse professionalism in the working of the CBI". Last week, the Government set in motion a restructuring programme for the CBI that would not only arm it with more powers but bring it under the direct control of the Union Home Ministry. An inter-ministerial working group has been set up with Union Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar as its head to plan the bifurcation of the CBI: one division to continue as usual and the other to be called the Federal Law Enforcement Agency (flea). The flea is exactly on the lines of the FBI of the US, with powers to investigate "federal crimes" anywhere in the country without waiting for the state government's permission. It will be directly under the Union Home Ministry so that it can coordinate action with other Central agencies including the Intelligence Bureau, the Military Intelligence and the Revenue Intelligence. CBI Director R.K. Raghavan, who has been assigned by the Home Ministry to prepare a blueprint for flea, says the working group would also define the term "federal crime" to include offences like hijacking, assassinations, attack on government properties, fake passport and currency rackets and cyber crime. But what's more important is that the flea would be free to initiate a probe into these types of crimes suo motu without waiting for orders from political bosses. This would prevent political interference, a common problem faced by the CBI while investigating corruption in high places. "If it is impartial and independent, the CBI will be stronger than the FBI. If not, it can be worse than Delhi Police," says former Union minister of state for home C.M. Ibrahim, who was also a member of the Standing Committee on Home Affairs. Such comments are not without reason. In the past 15 years, the CBI's reputation as an impartial and competent investigating agency has taken a severe beating. This has led to the impression that the CBI is now a tool with which the government fixes its opponents. In many cases which had political ramifications, the CBI first developed cold feet and failed to respond to the complaint. When jerked out of slumber by a directive from a court, the CBI panicked, hurried through with the investigation in a slipshod manner and put together a flimsy case that usually got dismissed (see box). A week after the Standing Committee's report was tabled in Parliament, Minister of State for Personnel Vasundhara Raje revealed in the Rajya Sabha that in the past five years, the courts had on eight occasions passed strictures against the CBI's handling of cases and that 643 cases resulted in acquittal. She refuted Ibrahim's charge that this was happening because the CBI was prosecuting people on "frivolous" charges and on the basis of "insufficient" evidence. Privately, CBI officials lay the blame for the mess at the door of politicians. They point out that on several occasions, CBI's political masters have made the investigating agency pursue cases that had little substance. In the Jain hawala case, for instance, the entire investigation was on the basis of a few vague entries in the diaries of the Jain brothers. The CBI conducted the investigation following a directive from the Supreme Court and implicated a number of politicians ranging from L.K. Advani to Sharad Yadav. The CBI, which was assigned the case in April 1991, had not initiated an investigation because the diaries contained some big names. However, when a public-interest petition was filed in the Supreme Court in March 1996, the apex court ordered that the CBI expedite the investigation into the scandal. Significantly, the court asked the CBI to report to it directly and not to the political bosses. To prevent political interference, a Supreme Court bench in December 1997 gave the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) statutory status and brought the CBI under its purview. However, the CVC Bill to convert the ordinance (which lapsed on April 4 last year) could not be passed in Parliament. The Bofors case is a classic example of political interference. A CBI director was removed by the V.P. Singh government because he had refused to register the case. But the director who registered the case in January 1990 was removed by the Chandra Shekhar government. This theatre of the absurd continued after P.V. Narasimha Rao became prime minister in 1991. Within a year, officials handling the case, including joint director K. Madhavan, were transferred. Madhavan says he was taken off the case "at the instance of Rao and a VVIP lady" who was "an extra-constitutional authority" after he had interrogated the Hinduja brothers in London. A decade later, the case is partly under trial and partly under investigation. The multi-crore fodder scam in Bihar is another example of politics interfering in the functioning of the CBI. Only in this case it displayed undue haste. Joint Director (East) U.N. Biswas went out of the way to arrest Laloo Prasad Yadav even though the former Bihar chief minister had announced that he would surrender before the CBI court. In how many cases, asks Rashtriya Janata Dal national spokesperson Shivanand Tiwary, has the CBI shown such haste, even sought permission from a judge early in the morning to involve the army and then rushed to the Army Headquarters to seek its help? The episode led to a departmental inquiry which severely indicted Biswas for his conduct. However, Biswas managed to have the last laugh because the Samata Party launched an agitation in Patna and threatened to walk out of the alliance if the Central Government initiated any action against him. That it was acting like a political arm of the ruling NDA was also clear in the manner in which the CBI sought the governor's sanction to prosecute both Laloo and Rabri Devi in the Rs 40 lakh disproportionate assets case just before the process of forming a government began in Bihar. In fact, the opposition tried to prevent Rabri from taking oath citing the CBI's application. The governor sanctioned permission to prosecute Rabri and Laloo on March 10. So, barely had Rabri taken oath as chief minister than the CBI filed a charge-sheet against her. Over the years, the CBI has been similarly subverted by politicians. In 1988, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi made it mandatory for the CBI to seek prior consent of the departments concerned for a probe against senior officials. It was, say officials, aimed at delaying or derailing the investigation. However, in 1997, the Supreme Court quashed the order and made the CVC responsible for effective functioning of the CBI. Honest officers have often been victimised. Former CBI director Joginder Singh was ousted in 1997 because the then prime minister I.K. Gujral was "not interested" in pursuing the fodder scam case. Sources cite the case of an officer O.P. Sharma who was framed in a corruption case and prosecuted. His crime: he wanted to follow up the entries in the Jain brothers' diaries during the last days of Chandra Shekhar as prime minister. Narasimha Rao, who succeeded him, ordered his suspension and prosecution. On the other hand, corrupt politicians have been shielded. In 1994, Narasimha Rao got the Department of Personnel to issue a directive which said that the request for permission to investigate or prosecute a minister would now be referred to the prime minister. Interestingly, Rao got this order issued after the CBI's report indicting B. Shankaranand in a scam. Though Raghavan denies any political interference in the working of the CBI, he does realise that the credibility of the agency is at a low. To stem the rot, he has drawn up plans to revive the glory of the investigating agency. Already, in-house training programmes have been stepped up and a batch of officers have been sent to the Hyderabad-based RBI Academy for training them in detecting cyber crime. "We want to sharpen legal knowledge of the officials," he says (see interview). Can Raghavan achieve that? Even BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, who was at the forefront of the campaign to get the investigation into the fodder scam shifted to the CBI, is doubtful that the guilty will be brought to book. |
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 © Living Media India Ltd |
The
sloth and political interference in government departments is not
surprising any more. But the report of the Standing Committee on Home
Affairs was enough to shock Parliament when it was tabled on April 19. The
report came down heavily on the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for
its tardiness and called for a detailed scrutiny of the working of the
country's premier investigating agency.