Day before key Supreme Court hearing in case against ex-ED official,CBI drops its lawyers

The surprise decision,taken the day before a crucial hearing in the apex court on Thursday,means that Attorney General Goolam E Vahanvati will appear for the CBI.

Subramaniam and Krishnan were informed of their ouster from the case late on Wednesday evening by senior CBI officers. Vahanvati too was informed.

Sources told The Indian Express that the CBI took the decision to drop the two lawyers at the behest of the Department of Personnel and Training DoPT,which also recommended that the AG be asked to appear for the agency before the bench headed by Justice B S Chauhan.

DoPT is the administrative department in charge of the CBI. No one from the government or CBI was available for a comment.

The decision is likely to add fresh fuel to the ongoing controversy over the government controlling the CBI. In May,the Supreme Court had assailed the agency for changing the heart of its status report on the coal blocks allotments probe,and described it as a caged parrot,speaking in its masters voice.

On July 17,during the last hearing in the bunch of seven inter-connected petitions pertaining to the prosecution of Aggarwal and others on charges of amassing disproportionate assets and forgery etc.,Subramanium and Krishnan had strongly opposed Aggarwals plea for immediate reinstatement on the ground that it was unprecedented case where an officer had not been given back his job even after 13 years. The matter was heard by a bench headed by the then CJI Altamas Kabir,who retired the next day.

The two lawyers had told the court that Aggarwal had been found to be in possession of disproportionate assets 12,000 times his known sources of income. They said that Aggarwal and his co-accused had filed as many as 40 frivolous cases against investigators,including the present Delhi Police Commissioner Neeraj Kumar,who was a joint director in the CBI at that time.

Subramanium,who had once also appeared for the CBI in a trial court to oppose Aggarwals bail plea,also told the court that reinstating Aggarwal would mean putting a premium to dishonesty. His arguments were supported by Additional Solicitor General Indira Jaisingh,who appeared for the finance ministry.

In 2002,after the finance ministry sanctioned Aggarwals prosecution,the CBI chargesheeted him in two cases.

In the first case,Aggarwal faces allegations of being part of a criminal conspiracy to blackmail one Subash Barjathiya on the basis of forged Swiss bank documents.

In the second,the CBI alleged that the IRS officer had amassed disproportionate assets to the tune of Rs 12.04 crore.