"Was the government sleeping all these years on the issue of blackmoney," the Supreme Court today said while criticising Centre's probe restricting to an individual and being evasive about the idea of an investigation by the Special Investigating Team.
The apex court said the investigation into the issue of black money required "complete" and "full-fledged" involvement of government as the most important question was about the disclosure of source of money stashed in foreign banks which may be terror money or money coming from drug peddling.
A bench of justices B Sudershan Reddy and S S Nijjar asked the governemnt to explain why its investigation is focused only on Pune stud farm owner Hassan Ali Khan and no other name has come out who have stashed money in overseas banks.
"Your whole focus is centred on one individual. Does it mean that all the black money parked in foreign banks belong to only one person? Is it that black money issue is surrounding around one person? Do you have information beyond that?" the bench said.
"We put it very simply and bluntly. Do you have any information regarding other persons also? It seems there is only one person (Indian) who has bank account in Switzerland and no other persons' account has come under suspect in Swiss bank," the bench told the governemnt.
Responding to the specific question put by the bench, Solicitor General Gopal Subramanium said the matter has to be investigated on different fronts and the court should ask the RBI to file a report on black money stashed in UBS Bank, Switzerland, on the basis of which further action could be taken.
He said the issue of passport case should be investigated by CBI as the offence in this regard was not restricted only to Maharashtra but to other states and earlier also it was stated that "it is not an offence simplicitor".
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Not impressed by the arguments of the government, the bench said "do you want to say that all government agencies were sleeping till now on this issue? Now you are saying that different aspects of the case have to be handled by different agencies."
"Is it your case that there is no suspect account in foreign banks other than this man? Since you have been working on the case at least since 2009, we did not say investigation has be a person specific. What is your information"? the bench said adding "the source of money has to be found whether it was terror money or money coming from drug peddling".