The CBI muck has now landed at the doorstep of the Narendra Modi government with a senior officer in the premier probe agency making a startling disclosure before the Supreme Court on Monday. A petition, filed by senior IPS officer Manish Kumar Sinha, DIG (head of branch) in CBI's anti-corruption unit, claimed bribe money reaching the doorstep of a Union minister and misuse of office by a number of senior bureaucrats. Sinha alleged that he has been arbitrarily transferred to Nagpur in the wee hours on October 24 when the government issued a midnight order divesting CBI director Alok Verma and special director Rakesh Asthana of their powers and functions.
Sinha, in his petition, said that he does not ''identify or seek to espouse the case of any of the senior officers of the CBI” but is “knocking the doors of justice to bring certain material facts to the kind notice of the court.'' He then spilled the beans on the rot in the CBI in the form of an alleged politician-bureaucrat-CBI-middleman-businessman nexus. Sinha's disclosures named a Union minister and some top government officials across key central organisations, claiming that the Rs 2 crore bribe money which is the bone of contention between Verma and Asthana, with each claiming that the other was paid bribe money, was actually paid to the Union minister.
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According to Sinha's petition, a number of bureaucrats were allegedly in touch with Satish Sana Babu, the complainant in the CBI's case against special director Rakesh Asthana, not only promising him full protection but also trying to influence the case. Sana is a Hyderabad-based businessman who had complained against Asthana to the CBI and had also approached the Supreme Court seeking protection. Sana is being investigated by the Enforcement Directorate in a money laundering case involving meat exporter Moin Qureshi.
In his petition which runs into several pages, Sinha said that the Moin Qureshi case can be taken as an example of the terrible state of affairs in the CBI. “The (Moin Qureshi) case was registered in early 2017 and is still under investigation even after more than a year and a half. Sana himself was called on multiple occasions by the CBI and the ED. The ED did not charge-sheet him but made him a witness. This indicates that he may not be a central player in the case. However, such open ended investigations give ample scope to unscrupulous elements to indulge in illegal or undesirable activities .''
Sinha claimed that he had asked Sana as to why the payments were purportedly made to so many people. ''His reply was that there was no other choice but getting access to senior functionaries and paying bribe to ''manage relief'', that he was “threatened” and was put in “fear”, that he had to “protect his business” wherein he is running 3 to 4 companies with 400 employees, that there was no option but to agree to demand and this was pure extortion,” the petition said. Sinha said Sana had also lamented that he “has to face all these difficulties though he is a zero debt company while many with thousands of crores of debt are moving freely and happily.''
Sinha said that “there is a pressing need to fix a timeline for investigation of such cases so that the premier investigating agencies such as the CBI does not become the ''Centre for Bogus Investigation'' and the Enforcement Directorate does not become ''Extortion Directorate''''.
“The la affaire Sana is symptomatic of a deep rooted malaise in the country's premier investigation agency – the CBI,'' he said. The officer said he is troubled by the contents of Sana's allegations which, if proved to be true, reflect very poorly on our criminal justice delivery system in general and the CBI in particular.
Sinha told the apex court that his decision to file the instant application was taken at great personal and professional risk, but his intentions are bonafide and genuine. He not only wanted his transfer order to be set aside, but also pleaded before the court that the CBI's investigation team, which has been ''penalised and victimised'' because of its impartiality and diligence by throwing them out to remote places, should be given protection from the court.
