The attorney general, Ashok Desai, appearing for the CBI, told a division bench comprising Justice J S Verma and Justice B N Kirpal monitoring various criminal cases against godman Chandraswami, made these submissions after Amicus Curae, Anil Diwan, contended before the court that the agency was continuing to drag its feet in the matter of probing the forgery case.
The St Kitts case relates to the alleged falsification of bank accounts in a bank in the island nation in the names of former Prime Minister V P Singh and his son Ajeya Singh, purportedly to sully their name.
Desai submitted before the court that the charge that the CBI was dragging its feet in the matter was not quite accurate and that the probe was in fact coming to a head, the allegation that the CBI was not acting with alacrity in the matter is totally wrong because the agency has been taking vigorous steps to conclude the investigations.
Earlier, Desai apprised the judges in camera about the progress in the St.Kitts investigations saying he would not prefer telling it in open court. Immediately after a thirty-minute in-camera proceeding, the judges in a brief order said the court had been apprised of the progress made by the investigating agencies in the several cases against Chandraswami being dealt with by the court.
The judges said the CBI director, Joginder Singh, and the revenue secretary, N K Singh, had assured the court of further progress before the next date of hearing on September 27, when they expected to apprise the court of the definite actions taken by them in this regard.
In his submissions Diwan told the court that there appeared to be different opinions within the government on filing chargesheets against Narasimha Rao in the St Kitts case.
More From This Section
According to reports in a section of the press the former attorney general Soli Sorabjee had reportedly stated that no material existed for a case against Rao, but Sorabjee had since denied the statement attributed to him saying the reports were totally incorrect and the exact reverse of what he had opined.
Diwan submitted that according to press reports a CBI officer in charge of the investigations had in a file noting opined that Rao should be chargesheeted in the case.
Despite all this the CBI had been dragging its feet in the matter not only since 1990 but even after 1996 when exhaustive materials had been located, Diwan said adding that this amounted to dereliction of duty.
The senior counsel said the court was entitled to know why the former attorney general's opinion had not been acted upon and what was the fate of the CBI officer who had written the file noting.
Diwan said the CBI legal department, according to the reports, had supported the view taken by the CBI officer in the case but nothing had come out of it so far.
The court was also entitled to know from the CBI whether the former Prime Minister had been interrogated or not in connection with the case.
If the CBI failed to come up with answers at the next date of hearing, the court should consider alternative structure for probing the case, Diwan submitted.
The court asked the Delhi police commissioner, Nikhil Kumar, to complete the process of filing of chargesheet against the accused, including Chandraswami in the case of planting of bomb in the car of a journalist Rajinder Jain.
The attorney general earlier told the court that after the last date of hearing on July 22, the CBI had chargesheeted Manmohan Segal on August one.
Chandraswami himself had been arrested in the case on August 29.
Another key accused Satnam Fauji, who was involved in the actual planting of the bomb had been declared proclaimed offender.
Two other accused