NEW DELHI, March 23: A Delhi High Court (HC) today rapped the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for its failure to comply with its previous order regarding filing of status report in the Rs 420-crore HDW submarine scam case and ordered it to strictly adhere to the direction within two days.A Division Bench comprising Chief Justice Mahinder Narain and Justice S K Mahajan asked a CBI official, who was present in the Court, to explain why the December 8, 1997 order of the Bench was not complied with.The Court had on that day ordered the CBI to place before it the status report in the controversial deal in which kickbacks running into crores of rupees were alleged to have been paid to top public servants and defence officials.The Court was hearing a public interest petition filed by environmental and legal activist BL Wadhera, seeking a direction to the investigating agency to speed up the probe into the deal, struck during the regime of late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1987 with M/S HDW LTD., aGerman firm.The Bench refused to accept the request of the CBI official for placing the status report only for the Court's perusal in a sealed cover, saying that it had already made an order in this regard and the CBI was under obligation to file the status report through registry, making the report accessible for all the parties.To the query of the Court whether the CBI had enquired about the German income tax laws, the agency official said they had made efforts but could not obtain the information regarding the rules and laws prevalent at the time of signing of the deal, since almost eleven years had elapsed.The Bench directed Wadehra to find out the German income tax laws and place it before the Court, if acquired.Refusing to accept the reasons for the delay in filing of the status report, the judges said if the agency had difficulties in complying with their order, it should have filed an application.``Why should we have the status report for perusal? It should be placed on the Courtrecord. We have already passed an order in this regard and it should be complied with,'' the Bench observed.``We want the compliance of the December 8 order,'' the judges directed the CBI and adjourned the matter for further hearing on March 26. Wadehra submitted that though CBI had been submitting for the last one year that it would provide the status report, they had failed to do so.The petition had urged the Court to direct the CBI to immediately file a status report .
