SC may appoint special public prosecutors to study CBI reports
9 July 2014 1:04 AM GMT
The Supreme Court on Tuesday indicated it may favour appointing special public prosecutors to examine the CBI reports and the material of its investigations into various cases related to the coal scam.
Seeking to put in place such a mechanism to independently and objectively examine the CBI report, a bench of Chief Justice RM Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph asked senior counsel Amarendra Saran for the CBI and Prashant Bhushan representing NGO Common Cause to suggest some names.
‘The court wants to have an assurance whether the view you have taken is an appropriate view,’ Chief Justice Lodha said, adding that it wanted to know if the conclusions the CBI has drawn based on the facts before the agency were prima facie correct.
‘Let us have a thorough examination of the material by a competent authority,’ Supreme Court bench said. The court thought of taking the route of special public prosecutors to vet the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reports, as Saran once again resisted the earlier move of asking CBI to send all its reports to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for scrutiny where it was filing the closure report or there were differences within the agency on the course to be adopted in a particular case.
‘Whenever we file a closure report, my report is suspected,’ Saran told the court as he contested the direction that the CBI send, to the CVC, the cases with entire material where it is filing a closure report. Bhushan told the court that the CBI’s resistance to scrutiny of its reports by the CVC was based on the mandate of the CVC under the statute it was created.
Seeking to put in place such a mechanism to independently and objectively examine the CBI report, a bench of Chief Justice RM Lodha, Justice Madan B Lokur and Justice Kurian Joseph asked senior counsel Amarendra Saran for the CBI and Prashant Bhushan representing NGO Common Cause to suggest some names.
‘The court wants to have an assurance whether the view you have taken is an appropriate view,’ Chief Justice Lodha said, adding that it wanted to know if the conclusions the CBI has drawn based on the facts before the agency were prima facie correct.
‘Let us have a thorough examination of the material by a competent authority,’ Supreme Court bench said. The court thought of taking the route of special public prosecutors to vet the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) reports, as Saran once again resisted the earlier move of asking CBI to send all its reports to the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) for scrutiny where it was filing the closure report or there were differences within the agency on the course to be adopted in a particular case.
‘Whenever we file a closure report, my report is suspected,’ Saran told the court as he contested the direction that the CBI send, to the CVC, the cases with entire material where it is filing a closure report. Bhushan told the court that the CBI’s resistance to scrutiny of its reports by the CVC was based on the mandate of the CVC under the statute it was created.
Next Story
