Dabholkar case: HC pulls up CBI for leaking probe info

Mumbai, June 23: Pulling up CBI for divulging to the media probe details in the Narendra Dabholkar murder case, the Bombay High Court on Thursday warned the agency that it will not hesitate to direct disciplinary action against officers doing so and send them to jail.

“Your (CBI) progress report is nothing but news reports. All this is already there in the public domain. How does the media come to know about the identity of witnesses in the case and where the agency is going to conduct searches. Everything is revealed to the media,” the court said.

The stinging remarks against the premier probe agency came from a bench of Justices S.C. Dharmadhikari and Shalini Phansalkar Joshi while hearing a batch of petitions filed by the families of rationalist Dabholkar and slain communist leader and activist Govind Pansare seeking HC monitoring of both the investigations.

“You will be ruining the entire probe if you conduct yourself in this fashion. Absconding accused in the case must be getting details pertaining to the probe from the media. Hats off to CBI,” the bench observed.

The bench sought to know from the Maharashtra government if it had decided to seek a CBI probe in the Pansare case as claimed by the lawyer of the family of the slain activist, even as the prosecutor said he had no such instruction.