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New UserFormer CBI chief Ranjit Sinha made prima facie bid to influence coal probe: SC panel
13 Jul 2016
A Supreme Court appointed panel, which inquired into allegations that former
CBI director Ranjit Sinha hobnobbed with some accused in the coal block allotment scam,
has prima facie found an attempt to influence the agency's investigations into the case, the
government's top lawyer told the court.
The panel concluded as genuine the entries made in a register kept at the official residence
of Sinha, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi told the top court on Tuesday.
The panel was formed after NGO Common Cause raised the matter in the court, alleging
that the entries showed meetings between the accused and Sinha to manipulate the probe.
Prima facie "there is something against him" in the committee's "damning remarks", Rohatgi
told a bench of Justices Madan B Lokur, Kurien Joseph and AK Sikri.
The court reserved its order on the next course of action on the registers. The Supreme Court had in 2014 cancelled allocation of more
than 200 coal blocks, citing irregularities in the allotment process. The CBI investigated charges of corruption in the allotment and the highprofile
case is now before a trail court.
"There is definitely some evidence that Sinha prevaricated, didn't do this, didn't so that," said the AG, who had been asked by the court to
have a look at the report submitted to it earlier by the panel headed by ML Sharma, himself a former CBI director.
Rohatgi, however, opposed filing of any FIR against the former CBI boss over the register, saying the investigations in the case had come
almost to a close.
The AG said he had no way of establishing whether the registers were indeed genuine. He said also all the decisions of the CBI to
whether to register a case or close one had since been vetted by the Chief Vigilance Commissioner, the agency's supervisory body, and
no accused could have possibly benefitted from his decisions. Sinha, who had consistently denied the allegations, refuted the panel's
findings, saying there were "highly dubious" entries in the register.
"Some when I have not been at home, some in which I have been abroad," his lawyer Vikas Singh said.
He said also there was not a single case in which Sinha singlehandedly took a call. NGO Common Cause, which had also successfully
challenged the government's coal block allocations in the court, insisted on immediate registration of an FIR to establish whether the
meetings had compromised the cases against some of the accused in the coal block allocation case. Its lawyer Prashant Bhushan said in
the alternative, the court could appoint a special investigation team to probe it.
Justice Sikri asked whether it would be appropriate to have the report made public and objections sought before embarking on any further
course of action. The AG opposed it, saying the accused in the case will also want a say on it and so forth. "That would open the
floodgates for all."
Source: Economic Times