No derailment of coal scam cases probe by Sinha, CBI tells SC

New Delhi, Feb 23 (IANS) The CBI Monday opposed, in the Supreme Court, NGO Common Cause's plea seeking SIT probe into alleged influencing of investigations into coal scam cases by its former director Ranjit Sinha in the wake of his meetings with some people named as accused, saying the allegations were incorrect.

Central Bureau of Investigation's counsel Amarinder Saran told a bench of Justice Madan B. Lokur, Justice Kurian Joseph and Justice A.K.Sikri that it was not correct that the former director kept on the changing the opinion of the investigating officers.

To buttress his point, Saran said that there was a hierarchy of the officers through which a file passes and every officer while giving his opinion also records reasons to back up his view.

Alleging "abuse of office and criminal misconduct" by Sinha, lawyer Prashant Bhushan, appearing for Common Cause, referred to instance wherein Sinha had gone against the opinion of the investigating officers and other superior officers of the agency after meeting the alleged accused in coal block allocation scam.

Bhushan referred to the instances where the top echelons of the CBI including Sinha "repeatedly overruled the investigation officers and forced them to not to register FIRs/RCs in cases where PEs had been registered" but some of them were re-opened later after they were referred to the Central Vigilance Commission by the apex court.

At the outset of the hearing, the CBI opposed Bhushan's plea seeking access to certain documents available with the probe agency.

Bhushan told the court that these files could be shown to Special Public Prosecutor R.S. Cheema, who is leading prosecution cases before the trial court trying the coal block allocation scam cases, and he in turn would give his report to the court.

He said that this would be similar to the course followed by the apex court when similar allegations were levelled against Sinha in 2G scam cases and Special Public Prosecutor Anand Grover in 2G cases examined the files and gave a report to the court.

At this, the court asked him to argue his case and that it would like to be first satisfied about prima facie veracity of the allegations being levelled by him.

As court directed the further hearing of the matter March 16, senior counsel Vikas Singh, appearing for Sinha, told the court that he would like to place before it something beyond what the CBI has argued.

Challenging the veracity of the extracts of the alleged CBI file being relied upon by Bhushan while making allegations against his client, Singh wondered where did he get it from as the same was neither before the trial court or brought upon by the prosecution in the trial court.