CBI with SC on nod to act against senior bureaucrats in court-monitored cases

NEW DELHI: The Central Bureau of Investigation ( CBI) has sided with the Supreme Court’s line to dispense with official sanction for prosecuting senior bureaucrats in court-monitored cases, potentially rendering officials in the Prime Minister’s Office vulnerable to the agency’s investigations in the coal block allocations case.

The country’s premier investigating agency took this line in an affidavit filed ahead of the August 29 hearing of the coal blocks allocation case in the top court, setting the stage for a bitter standoff with the government with which it has disagreements on aspects of its autonomy.

“There is no requirement of sanction for prosecution in cases where the court has directed investigation and is monitoring the investigation of a case,” the affidavit, vetted by senior counsel Amarendra Sharan, said.

The government has argued that giving a free hand to the CBI could leave officials vulnerable to malicious prosecution, potentially even exacerbating the paralysis in decision making by bureaucrats.

But the CBI said in court-monitored cases, the court could protect officials from any malicious action. The government has shot down most of CBI’s proposals to grant it autonomy, after the issue of greater freedom for the investigating agency was flagged by the Supreme Court some months earlier.

The court had called the CBI a “caged parrot” speaking in his “master’s voice” during the course of its hearings into the case after the court found the agency sharing its investigation reports with the government.




In the affidavit, the CBI once again insisted that the director should be given the status of an ex-officio secretary to address the agency’s functional needs, a demand that has been rejected by the government.

In a separate affidavit, the government admitted to the SC that some files related to the coal allocations case could not be located. The coal ministry said an interministerial committee was trying to trace the files and would finish the task in a month.

The admission could create problems for the government, which has received flak from the court for not cooperating in the CBI probe. It said it had handed over 769 files, documents and other papers in original to the CBI, and promised to make available additional documents if required. It also said clarifications sought in nine cases would be made available to the CBI shortly.

The UPA has come under sharp criticism for its role in allocating coal blocks, with critics alleging that they were allocated to ineligible companies, some of them run by people close to the Congress, and caused several tens of billions of dollars in loss to the exchequer. Parliament has been disrupted on many occasions over the issue, dubbed by opposition as the “Coalgate scam”.