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Editorial
CBI sinks deeper into stink
For 25 years,
the Congress refused to give justice to the Sikhs by neither
following up action against its own leaders, nor sidelining or
dropping them from the party nor proactively following up the cases
in court against senior party leaders.
Instead, it was
too eager to rather give these leaders, tainted with the genocide of
Sikhs, responsible positions in the party and the government.
But when it
comes to its own party high commands friends in high places, it
feels no shame in deliberately letting go of men clearly accused of
high corruption.
In both cases,
the CBI lets itself be used as a pawn for petty political ends. In
recent years, the amount of shame it has accumulated would have
ensured wounding up of any self respecting agency.
Last Wednesday,
the Central Bureau of Investigation told a court in Delhi that the
witnesses, who deposed against the role of Congress leader Jagdish
Tytler in the 1984 anti-Sikh carnage were not reliable.
This has been a
line that has been flogged to death by the CBI even as every
dispassionate political analyst and legal mind knows that the CBI is
barking up the wrong tree here. Witnes Surinder Singh, now deceased,
had explained on prime time national TV why and how he was made to
change his statements.
It was the CBI
that had rushed to give Tytler a clean chit earlier by even refusing
to acknowledge the existence of witness Jasbir Singh. It was the
alactrity with which the media reacted that CBI was pput to shame
when a witness it could not find in years was tracked down by the
media. Jasbir Singh remained steadfast in his testimony and nailed
Tytler's lie beyond any doubt.
But unashamedly,
the Additional CBI public prosecutor has submitted before Additional
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Rakesh Pandit that the two witnesses,
Surinder Singh and Jasbir Singh, were unreliable as they have
contradicted their statements on various occasions.
CBI counsel also
said the statements of these two witnesses hold no credentials and
were given only to falsely implicate Tytler.
"Surinder, in
his first affidavit before the Nanavati Commission in January 2002,
had stated that Tytler along with others had attacked Gurdwara Pul
Bangash and killed Thakur Singh and Badal Singh. But in another
affidavit in August 2002 he denied Tytler's role." It was none other
than Surinder Simngh who had brought forth these facts and had cited
circumstances in which he was made to shift back and forth.
But even as the
court, after hearing CBI counsel, slated the next hearing on Oct 31,
when the probe agency will argue on the version given by Jasbir
Singh, the federal sleuthing agency has covered itself up in shame
again.
In a case which
close associate and friend of India's first political family of
Nehru Gandhis, Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi, was accused
of corruption of millions, the Congress-led UPA government has
finally told the Indian Supreme Court that it had decided to
withdraw all cases against him. Its reason was that the former
Attorney General Milon Banerji had pointed out that the CBI did not
challenge the February 2004 High Court order quashing all charges
under the Prevention of Corruption Act in the Bofors case. “Since no
Special Leave Petition was filed on this ground... the Red Corner
Notice is invalid.”
What Banerji did
not mention — and what was buried in confidential files — was that
it was Banerji himself who, barely two months after the Congress-led
government came to power, overruled CBI investigators and directed
the agency not to file the SLP against the High Court order.
It is thus a
clear case of misuse of the CBI.
The opposition
BJP and the communist parties are crying hoarse. The fact remains
that had they made as much noise about securing justice for the
Sikhs, they would have been able to bring into sharp relief the
misuse of CBI by the rulers.
Clearly, none of
the political parties in
India
have covered themselves with glory as far as the CBI functioning is
concerned.
30
September 2009
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