Is CBI enquiry just for show?

Just how far and how deep is the involvement of the government’s premier investigative agency with the biggest corruption scandal that cost the country Rs 1.7 lakh crores in losses to the exchequer? With the surfacing of the anonymously recorded audio CD that purportedly hints at the collusion between one of the public prosecutors, A K Singh, with one of the key accused in the 2G Spectrum scam, Sanjay Chandra, the Managing Director of Unitech, a real estate company that was trying to make inroads into the lucrative telecom sector under the auspices of the disgraced former telecom minister A Raja, the sanctity of the Central Bureau of Investigation has been severely challenged. In a classic case of the protector becoming the predator, first the government and now the probing agencies have been exposed to be not only aware of the rampant corruption that’s destroying our system, but in fact, fully conniving with the perpetrators of such crimes. Increasingly, every institution of our country, including the police, the investigative agencies, the media, the educational sector, and even the military, is falling prey to the gigantic putrescent net of corruption, and the latest installment in the 2G scam revelations only reiterate the deplorable reality that the long arm of corruption is still playing its dirty games.

While an enquiry to establish the veracity of the audio tapes is a prerequisite, can we really rely any longer on the façades of inquisitions that are played out on the imaginary screens of our collective conscience? In this context, CBI’s statement, saying that it maintains strict vigilance over its officers, falls flat, precisely because it is the vigilantes who have been unmasked and proved to be the villains. If the voice on the CD is indeed AK Singh’s and if it is proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the public prosecutor was advising the prime accused about the way a key witness was about to testify in the special CBI court, the disclosures will deal a massive blow to not only the trust that the Indian public still rests in the country’s top fact-finding organisation, but will amount to a crime of staggering proportions. Contemporary India has been rotting inside as more and more scams and swindling games come to the fore, which out-compete each other by sinking to abysmal levels of criminal misconduct, sometimes not even sparing the war widows from their nets of greed and avarice. If guilty, Singh must not only be brought to book, but should be given the harshest of possible punishments, to act as a deterrent for people who flout legal and government protocols with such reprehensible audacity, and with such contempt for the laws of the land.