CBI vs CBI: Why row involving Alok Verma raises more questions than answers

In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, hurricanes hardly happen, goes the famous song. They don’t happen in the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) either. Except until now, when a tsunami of allegations and counter-allegations is threatening to rip India’s premier investigation organisation apart, its credibility in tatters, because you can now no longer be sure how much of the investigation undertaken and evidence produced in court to secure past convictions was real — and how much, manufactured via bribes/extortion/blackmail/political direction.

Alok Verma, director CBI, is in court. His petition will be heard by the Supreme Court today (Friday). He says he was ordered to go on leave — effectively on suspension, though the government says it is only an interim measure — because he did the right thing by challenging some of the actions of his junior, R K Asthana. Meanwhile, another officer, Devendra Kumar, has been arrested on suspicion of extortion. A bunch of officers has been transferred to other destination — one to as salubrious a location as Port Blair in the Andaman Islands. Asthana says his boss is corrupt to the core and has accepted bribes to direct/bury some cases. To get to the bottom of this, the government has ordered a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to investigate the investigators.

The country, meanwhile, is watching all this in shocked fascination and is rapidly re-evaluating what it thought it knew about the rule of law.

How did we get here? The most benign explanation seems to be that a turf war had been brewing at the CBI from 2017 when Verma became director. His appointment itself was the result of a political tug-of-war. A 1979 batch Indian Police Service officer of the Arunachal Pradesh-Goa-Mizoram and Union Territories (AGMUT) cadre, Verma had earlier served as director general of Delhi’s prisons network and had been Police Commissioner in Delhi for close to a year. When a successor had to be appointed to Anil Sinha, the government proposed Asthana’s name: a Gujarat cadre officer who had handled sensitive investigations relating to Narendra Modi, when he was chief minister, and his home minister, Amit Shah. He was made interim director. 

 Since the 1997 Vineet Narain judgment, which sought to insulate the CBI from executive interference, a committee of three people select the CBI chief from a shortlist sent from the home ministry and then the department of personnel. This committee comprises the prime minister, the head of the largest Opposition party in the Lok Sabha and either the country’s chief justice or a Supreme Court judge nominated by him. The Chief Justice of India (Justice Khehar at the time), the leader of the Opposition (then Mallikarjun Kharge) and the prime minister (Narendra Modi) considered the names, which were not made public. The government proposed Asthana because he had served in the CBI for an extended period on the strength of which he had been made interim director. 

Kharge wrote a note of dissent to this proposal. “I said that a person who fulfils all the conditions, who has a long service record, should be appointed. A person who has worked in the CBI, on corruption cases, should be given the post. They have ignored that,” he said in his dissent note. The Congress had a person in mind: Rupak Kumar Dutta from the Karnataka cadre. Justice Khehar could see there was a standoff. Finally, Verma was selected because he was the senior-most.

Verma, from all accounts, has a reputation of being punctilious, sometimes excessively so. He has served in the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in the 1980s and a colleague said: “He is the most unhelpful type, meticulous about paperwork, rules and law. He was very good on paper-keeping.” There wasn’t even a whisper of a controversy about him. “He has never been known to rock the boat,” said another colleague.

Asthana seems to be a direct opposite. A promotional video film about him — and there is no reason to believe he did not authorise it — begins with shots of Sardar Patel, Vivekanand and himself, in that order. He rose to become interim director — and then, to be robbed of the job, just when it was in his grasp.  

CBI is a highly hierarchical organisation. That Asthana should have allegedly complained to the cabinet secretary about the director’s style of operation — questioning everything, stymieing initiative — is in itself unusual and alarm bells should have begun ringing at that stage. But Verma’s argument was: “I am the director and I cannot have my special director taking orders and guidance from all and sundry.” 

What Verma’s colleagues are speculating is this: When Verma discovered the CBI was manufacturing evidence in some cases, he may also have stumbled over instructions issued by the political dispensation. What were these? What did they relate to?

“The problem was: Asthana knew he had ‘The Backing’. But Verma said he was the boss and asserted himself when he felt he was being undermined. This is what caused the problem,” said a colleague of Verma’s. The crunch came when Verma got wind of a conspiracy involving Devendra Kumar who was allegedly preparing a false affidavit and a chain of evidence against Verma. Was there any truth in these charges? Kumar is in custody. We don’t really know what he will say in court.

All CBI directors have a fixed two-year term. Verma’s term will end in January 2019. The next three months will decide how credible the CBI really is.