The Supreme Court on Friday restrained the Chhattisgarh Police from arresting or “unduly harassing” senior IPS officer Mukesh Gupta, who has accused the state administration under Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel of hounding him and his family. A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and S Ravindra Bhat also told the state police not to tap the phones of the official’s two daughters, as alleged by him. “Why tapping? No.,” Justice Mishra remarked when advocate Mahesh Jethmalani, appearing for Gupta, said that police was illegally intercepting the calls of his daughters in connection with the 2001 unnatural death of a family friend. Senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the state, said he had no knowledge of the tapping charges but added that he was willing to give an undertaking that “there shall be no phone tapping henceforth”. The court recorded his statement and ordered, “Let the phone tapping be stopped forthwith, as assured by Mr Mukul Rohatgi, learned senior counsel appearing for the respondent(s). There shall be no further phone tapping.” It added that the “interim order shall continue to operate until further orders and the petitioner is not to be harassed. He shall not be arrested also”. In an interim order on September 2, the court had stayed three FIRs filed by the state against Gupta and issued a notice to the state and Baghel. The order came on a writ petition by Gupta, who sought the transfer of the FIRs to the CBI. The writ petition said Gupta, as director general of the state’s Economic Offences Wing (EOW) and Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), had unearthed two major economic crimes — the Nagrik Aapurti Nigam (NAN) scam and the Alok Agrawal case. The NAN scam concerned large-scale corruption by various officers and employees of the state Civil Supplies Corporation, while the Alok Agarwal case relates to corruption by an executive engineer of the state’s Irrigation Department, which led to the recovery of more than Rs 9 crore in cash from him. Jethmalani pointed out that call intercepts had played a major role in busting the two cases, and that chargesheets had been filed and trials were on in these cases. After the change of government in the state following the December 2018 Assembly polls, Gupta was shifted as Director General, Police HQ “without any work charge”, the petition said. Subsequently, an SIT was constituted to reinvestigate the NAN scam, and two FIRs were lodged against Gupta and other officers in the NAN and Alok Agarwal case for allegedly conducting illegal phone intercepts. Meanwhile, he was suspended from service and a third FIR was lodged accusing him of committing criminal breach of trust, fraud and dishonestly fabricating documents to get the property registered illegally, Gupta added. In an fresh application filed in the matter this week, Gupta said that after the September 2 order, he and family members were again being harassed by the state administration. As part of the hounding, the state government had also withdrawn his promotion and two other IPS officers from the DG Rank on September 24, Gupta added. Rohatgi said the petitioner should have gone to the Chhattisgarh High Court with his prayer, and was instead misusing the law by filing a plea in the Supreme Court and also in the HC. The court will now hear the matter on November 4.
