Shekhar Gupta: Setting a cop to catch a cop

Why India's premier anti-corruption agency has defied two decades of reform and become an embarrassment with its bosses calling each other thief

“Hum CBI se hain.....asli waale” (We are from the CBI, the real ones), says Manoj Bajpayee, playing CBI inspector Waseem Khan leading a raiding party in Neeraj Pandey’s brilliant 2013 heist movie Special 26. The reason he has to make that “asli waale” claim is that another group under Akshay Kumar has also been raiding rich people, claiming to be from the CBI, and disappearing with their wealth.

A somewhat similar drama is now playing out in real life, and mostly inside the honourable Supreme Court. There are two groups led by the number one and two in the CBI,