The recent move by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) to drop all charges against six of the accused in the 2008 bomb blasts in Malegaon, Maharashtra, has raised afresh the question of the susceptibility of governmental investigative agencies to political pressures. The Malegaon case was considered a milestone because investigations, originally conducted by the Maharashtra anti-terrorism squad (ATS), revealed for the first time the role of Hindu right-wing groups in terror attacks such as on the Samjhauta Express in 2007. The decision by the NIA, which took over the investigation in 2011, to drop all charges against the six, who were members of various Hindu-right organisations, is disturbing for several reasons.
First, the former Special Prosecutor in the case, Rohini Salian, revealed to The Indian Express that a Superintendent of Police attached to the NIA had approached her soon after the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance came to power to ask her to “go soft” on the accused in the case. She was later taken off the case. It is hard to understand why this informal advisory should have been issued had there been no case against the accused in the first place. The agency denied exerting any such pressure, but Ms Salian, who has a reputation for integrity and rigour, backed her statement with an affidavit she filed in the Bombay High Court naming the officer concerned. The affidavit was part of a contempt petition by a Mumbai resident against the NIA for hampering the judicial process resulting in the weakening of the prosecution’s case (no surprise, the hearing of this petition has moved at glacial pace). It is also telling that the special prosecutor threatened to resign when the NIA filed the charge-sheet dropping the charges against the six, saying he had not been kept in the loop — only to retract the resignation in quick time, saying the issue had been resolved. It is possible that the evidence gathered under the draconian Maharashtra Control of Organised Crime Act (MCOCA), 1999 was compromised since the evidence was obtained under police interrogation (often a byword for torture). This could be one explanation by NIA for its decision. But it is worth wondering why it did not make this self-evident discovery for five years, under a Congress-led United Progressive Alliance regime. It is equally important to remember that the applicability of the MCoca has been questioned in the past and if investigations conducted by the Maharashtra ATS were defective or it was acccused of torture, then it should be called to account.
The NIA also pleaded lack of evidence against the six: the incident took place three years before the NIA stepped in, it said, so there was no more scope for collecting evidence from the scene of the crime or checking the veracity of the Maharashtra ATS’ investigation. Does it really take a crack investigative agency so long to see the light — that too, only after the National Democratic Alliance came to power? These inconsistencies add to the general perception of a lack of transparency in investigative procedures. Taken together with other recent and controversial revelations, it is hard to escape the depressing conclusion that investigative agencies are open to political manipulation. The Supreme Court once evocatively described the Central Bureau of Investigation as a “caged parrot”. On current evidence, the descriptor could apply to the NIA too.
