Rise. Rot. Revival

Once respected by all courts for its meticulous investigation and faultless findings, CBI has come to be called a “caged parrot,” a “Corrupt Bureau of Investigation,” and a “Congress Bureau of Investigation.” India’s once ace investigation agency, CBI, is a gift from India’s most beloved Prime Minister. On 1st April 1963, when it was so christened and then redesigned, he was India’s Home Minister. Even during his brief tenure as Home Minister, CBI earned a good reputation. Since 1963, CBI’s sword arm, the Special Police Establishment (SPE), has successfully prevented and investigated big corruption cases for 17 years already. SPE’s head, designated as Inspector General, was in charge for four years before CBI came into being. His name was D.P. Kohli. He became CBI’s first head. He was designated as Director, CBI. SPE then became a part of CBI. It was renamed General Offences Wing (GOW). It is the CBI’s Anti-Corruption Department. The other divisions of CBI are the Economic Offences Wing. Later, the expanding Special Crime Wing was added. Then came the Administrative Division, Forensic Division, and Coordination Division.

CBI started with a good reputation thanks to SPE’s splendid endeavours in the anti-corruption domain. Its detectives, all from SPE, were not loaded with other police work and were full-time investigators. SPE detectives, mostly insiders, delivered. SPE earned a tremendous reputation. When today CBI’s name is taken in the same breath as ED and NCB, I chafe, I fume, I gnash my teeth. I have seen it better—much better. SPE was manned at the top by a deputation of Indian Police Service and State Police Service officers. They comprised the management pool of SPE. The detectives, the insiders, were mostly from Sindh. With Pakistan coming into being, many Hindus from the Sindh police became SPE insiders. Even at the management level, Sindhis like Hingorani and Raisinghani, to name only two, both Deputy Inspector Generals, joined CBI. Both remained permanently in CBI and virtually converted themselves into insiders. They retired from CBI. Hingorani even got a six-month extension in CBI.

Both D.P. Kohli and Lal Bahadur Shastriji realised that able, competent insiders were a sine qua non to make CBI and its units reputed, respected, and revered detectives. They worked on it. They also did not ignore creating a CBI management cadre. In 1963, UPSC recruited, and on its recommendation, the first batch of seven probationers, all UPSC selected, joined CBI at the management level. I was in that batch. This level of recruitment continued till I retired in 1996. We were CBI insiders, the incipient management cadre of CBI. We also investigated important and very important crimes taken up by the CBI. The deputation of IPS and State Police Officers (SPS), from Shastriji’s time till Rajiv Gandhi’s time, also became insiders. They reverted on completion of their tenure and returned to CBI after a lapse of time. Some, very few, did not. Either they did not fit in with CBI’s work ethics, or CBI did not accept their ethics. But many did. So they became insiders, de facto. We UPSC-recruited CBI officers were the de jure insiders!

CBI became reputable. Both at the management level and at the detectives’ level, it now comprised virtually insiders. Their work made CBI a reputable organisation. A few examples of how they displayed CBI’s integrity and investigation skills and made its reputation can be related. Mohan Katre, IPS, Director CBI, and insider to boot in 1988, told Chidambaram, CBI Minister in Delhi, that no direction to follow his dictated line of investigation would be issued to the CBI DIG—that is, me, then at Lucknow investigating a murder. However, he, Chidambaram, could order my removal. The Minister backed off. Rajender Sekhar and S.K. Dutta, both IPS and CBI insiders like Katre, told Bhure Lal, V.P. Singh’s Joint Secretary, that the Prime Minister’s wish that the specially appointed Public Prosecutor to prosecute the Prime Minister’s elder brother’s son-in-law on the charge of conspiring to murder Syed Modi would not be replaced. Bhure Lal failed to budge them. (S.K. Dutta related this episode.) J.S. Bawa, IPS, another insider, told K.P. Singh Deo, Minister of State for Defence, that all those arrested by the Indian Army inside the Golden Temple after Operation Blue Star would not be prosecuted just because the Indian Army had arrested them from the Golden Temple complex. Their prosecution, he said, would be based only on evidence collected by the CBI of their being terrorists. Out of 1,492 arrested by the Indian Army, fewer than 400 were proceeded against. I, as SP Punjab Cell and Chief Investigating Officer, took this stand, and J.S. Bawa, Director, and Eric Rennison, Joint Director, backed me.

Sharad Pawar, CM of Maharashtra, was informed by me, as Joint Director CBI, through the Commissioner of Police, Bombay, that in the ’93 serial bomb blasts in Bombay, those that the Commissioner of Police, on his intervention, had applied Section 121 IPC (waging war) was an illegal decision. We, now as prosecutors, would drop the Waging War charge. We did. M.N. Singh, Commissioner of Police, Bombay, was upset. The Union Home Ministry had sanctioned the prosecution under the Waging War charge. Their CM had so instructed. He told me his CM was angry that this charge was dropped and that CM, now proceeding to the United Kingdom, would “fix me” on return. Sure enough, the Union Home Secretary asked me to explain. When the Attorney General examined my decision, he backed this CBI insider’s decision. GOI, Union Home Secretary Padmanabhaiah, whose Ministry had sanctioned the charges and who was a Maharashtra cadre IAS officer, failed to fix me. He wanted to. He could not.

CBI insiders upset bureaucrats years senior by their resolve. My list of anti-Shantonu Sen CBI insiders is long and powerful. They include the then Cabinet Secretary (I sought to book him in the Urea Scam), the then Secretary to the Prime Minister (I sought to book him in the Urea Scam by ordering SBI to release Rs 133 crore to a Turkish firm in advance, which they pocketed, and conspiring to protect Narasimha Rao’s son in the Urea Scam), the then Central Vigilance Commissioner (I overruled him. Two of his Joint Secretaries, when he was Secretary, Telecommunication, I sought to investigate), the Secretary of Heavy Industries (booked him for corruption when he was Member, Planning Commission), the RBI Governor (investigated in the Securities Scam), and the then Director parachuted into CBI during Narasimha Rao’s tenure as PM. They were all in the All India Services. They all failed to cause me harm.

Among politicians, I antagonised both the then Home Minister, Chidambaram (I suspect because I sent V. Krishnamoorthy to judicial custody for four months), and the then Minister of Personnel to whom CBI reported, the Prime Minister being her Cabinet Minister, Margaret Alva (for booking an MD of a nationalised bank she knew, I suspect).

All their poison turned into elixir, as Tejendra Khanna, also IAS, appreciated my resolve—that is, my conviction that only law will dictate my investigation, embedded in me through training and field experience. In his memoir Intent to Serve, he observes that it was my uncompromising integrity that made him choose me as his Principal Functionary to advise him on the Delhi Police during both his terms as Lt. Governor of Delhi. The Lt. Governor directly commanded the Delhi Police.

I also enjoyed the patronage of two politicians: Rajesh Pilot, Minister of State in the Home Ministry, and A.R. Antulay, both as MP and Health Minister. They always spoke in my favour.

In my time as a CBI insider, I was free to act as I understood the law. Till the late ’90s, insiders, both deputationists and CBI UPSC appointees, were servants of law. Law they obeyed, law fearlessly.

Narasimha Rao was the first long-tenure PM who started parachuting deputationist IPS officers without CBI experience as head of CBI. His appointee was called Narasimha Rao’s “poodle,” a Vir Sanghvi description. That was the name for Narasimha Rao’s choice, Vijay Rama Rao. Like Narasimha Rao, Vajpayee also parachuted his own man, Raghavan, IPS. They were complete outsiders, having never worked in CBI in any rank.

Manmohan Singh, as PM, reverted to selecting deputationists in CBI who worked in IPS and CBI as Director and top honchos in CBI. But the rot by then was too much. They failed to stop the decline. Since then, it has been only outsiders. CBI is today equated with ED—a shattering comparison!

What is happening now? Why the ill repute? Are there enough IPS/SPS insiders? Are there any CBI insiders recruited by UPSC? I hear many facts to the contrary. No wonder, without insiders, without pride in what is your own, the organisation—the CBI—is now an ill-reputed organisation.

It must be revived. The following steps are needed:

* Indian Police Service/State Police Service officers should attain higher ranks in CBI by going through all CBI ranks only. In other words, no parachuting. More of D.P. Kohli, D. Sen, John Lobo, Mohan Katre, J.S. Bawa, R. Sekhar, S.K. Dutta—and less of F.V. Arul, R.D. Singh, Vijay Karan, Vijay Rama Rao, and parachutists. There are exceptions, but they do not make the rule.

* UPSC appointees to CBI must be revived, ensuring their service conditions are at par with other Class One Central Services appointed through UPSC.

* CBI’s authority to suo motu register corruption cases, taken away in 2017, must be restored.

Views expressed are personal. The writer served in the CBI from 1963 to 1996