Vyapam scam | 7 months ago, Supreme Court had said: no CBI probe, HC ‘taking care’

On November 28 last year, a bench led by the CJI had dismissed a clutch of petitions, filed by Congress general secretary Digvijaya Singh — he is among the petitioners even now — along with some other party leaders, who sought transfer of the probe to the CBI. It also rejected this plea made in a petition filed by social activist Ajay Dubey.

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All these petitions had challenged an order passed in March 2014 by the High Court which declined a CBI probe saying “the investigation by the STF, as of now, is proceeding in the right direction and without any bias”. The High Court had decided instead to monitor the probe.

Senior lawyers such as Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Vivek Tankha and Indira Jaising, who appeared on Thursday for a batch of petitioners including Digvijaya Singh and some whistleblowers, had represented Singh and others in the previous round as well.

At that time, the bench, also comprising Justices A K Sikri and N V Ramana, had observed: “The Special Task Force (STF) is already probing the case under the direct supervision of Madhya Pradesh High Court. The STF has many professional people including investigators. We don’t see a need to hand over the probe to any other agency at this stage.”

“We have also looked into the operative portion of the judgment(s) and order(s) passed by the High Court. We are satisfied that the High Court has taken all care in monitoring the investigation done by the STF by constituting a Special Investigation Team, headed by a retired High Court judge. In that view of the matter, we do not see any infirmity in the order passed by the High Court. The special leave petitions are dismissed,” the order had read. Dubey’s petition, however, remained pending.

Again on March 23 this year, the CJI-led bench had turned down Sibal’s oral request to hand over the probe to the CBI. Sibal, who appeared for Dubey, had claimed certain documents now made public by a whistleblower disclosed names of several prominent persons, including Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, and were deliberately removed from the chargesheets.

But the bench refrained from issuing any order, and observed that the probe by the STF was already being monitored by the High Court and no interference was called for at that juncture. On a request by the state government, the bench had also extended by another four months the March 15 deadline for filing the chargesheet.