Jockeying Joginder

Inscrutable are the ways of the CBI, especially its director Joginder Singh. Its penchant for creating controversies seems to have got the ...

Inscrutable are the ways of the CBI, especially its director Joginder Singh. Its penchant for creating controversies seems to have got the better of its investigating talent. If the way it has been handling some sensitive cases is anything to go by, professionalism is at a discount in the CBI. Members of Parliament can hardly be faulted if they feel exercised over the agency selectively leaking information about some cases. While newspapers have a right to publish such information and they are certainly not complaining, it is for the CBI to keep it under wraps to meet the ends of justice. Moreover, it cannot arrogate to itself all the privileges of the executive, of which it is just a part. Nor can the legislature reconcile itself to a situation where it has to collate pieces of information about the CBI8217;s work from various newspapers. It is true the courts have freed the CBI from possible extraneous pressures in certain cases but that does not mean that it can ride roughshod over the whole system. Just as statistics can be manipulated to convey anything and everything, selective leakage can make or mar reputations. In any case trial through the media cannot be approved of, more so when the defendants cannot counter the official propaganda blitz.

If the CBI has indeed completed its investigation into the Bofors payoff case on the basis of the papers received from the Swiss authorities, nothing prevents it from proceeding against the guilty, howsoever highly placed they may be. Any other step can only undermine its own position. That is exactly what happened in the fodder scam. Few could have been amused by the haste with which Joginder Singh announced the CBI8217;s decision to file chargesheets against Bihar Chief Minister Laloo Prasad Yadav and some of his Cabinet colleagues on a Sunday afternoon and that too two days after he himself had announced that it would take a month8217;s time to study the voluminous report filed by those who actually investigated the case. That it took another three weeks for the CBI to seek the Governor8217;s sanction to prosecute Laloo shows how misplaced Singh8217;s sense of urgency was. In doing so, he has willy-nilly played into the hands of the wily politician, who has found a chink in the agency8217;s armour. Today when Yadav speaks of the CBI chief8217;s bias, many people are, unfortunately, willing to lend him an ear even if the Chief Minister may not have their sympathy. Needless to say, this does not redound to the credit of either the agency or its chief.

Unfortunately, it is not the first time the CBI has employed insinuations and half-truths to pillory those who had fallen into its net. Amazingly enough, it has not occurred to the agency that ultimately what matters is its ability to present a foolproof case to the courts. Few realise that the conviction rate of the high-profile cases it handled in the past is far from confidence-inspiring. In fact, the summary manner in which the court dismissed its case against BJP president L.K. Advani, former Minister V.C. Shukla and former Delhi Chief Minister M.L. Khurana in the hawala case exposes the shoddiness of its investigation and the readiness it showed to become a tool in the hands of its political masters. But, then, busy as it is in self-glorification, how can the CBI put its heart and soul into the investigation and thereby redeem itself?