MANY BELIEVE THE CBI’S COME TO THIS PASS AS POLITICAL CONSIDERATIONS HAVE LED TO THE INDUCTION OF OFFICERS WITH NO EXPERIENCE AT THE TOP

The full-blown crisis in the CBI, almost unprecedented in recent years, has revealed the government’s catastrophic neglect of the agency, which it knew was riven by internal rivalries. Prime Minister

Modi, BJP president Shah and the PMO bureaucrats allowed this to fester instead of taking corrective action. Shah shares the blame for the current mess because he functions as Modi’s advisor on appointments in politically sensitive agencies.

Rahul Gandhi was quick to seize upon the disarray in the CBI to take aim at an embattled prime minister. “The PM’s blueeyed boy, Gujarat cadre officer of Godhra SIT fame, infiltrated into the CBI as its no. 2 has now been caught taking bribes,” Rahul tweeted on October 23. “Under this PM, the CBI is a weapon of political vendetta. An institution in terminal decline that’s at war with itself.”

Says a senior officer, “Had the PMO called the three officers together and warned them against any further undercutting, with a personal warning from the prime minister himself, things wouldn’t have come to such a pass.”

Where then did the CBI lose its way and become a controversy magnet? Former police officials trace the downturn to the mid-1990s when the agency became increasingly politicised—by 2013, it earned the dubious “caged parrot” sobriquet from the Supreme Court, a reflection of its reputation as a tool for settling political scores.

N.R. Wasan, former director general, Bureau of Police Research and Development, says, “The CBI has come to such a pass because of the flawed induction mechanism introduced after the Vineet Narain hawala case.” The CBI was widely criticised when its prosecutions collapsed and the Supreme Court, deciding the Vineet Narain case, issued directions, including CVC oversight of the CBI. “This has led to the ugly split and spat, with at least three warring groups inside the CBI trying to outwit each other.”

Ajay Agnihotri, former member, Central Board of Direct Taxation, says, “All intelligence and investigation outfits in the states and at the Centre must be brought under legislative jurisdiction, like the US system. Leaving the bureaucracy to monitor the bureaucracy is the reason for this mess.” Wasan says there is a need for total overhaul of the induction system in order to include only those “who have both competence and integrity and not just integrity alone”. A recent trend, inspired by political and other extraneous considerations, has been to induct personnel with no earlier experience at the top. Like several of his predecessors, newly-appointed interim director M. Nageswara Rao does not have long-standing experience in the CBI. In the past, he has faced allegations of corruption by the CBI’s Special Unit head. He was also accused of stalling a probe against I-T officials whose names figured in the diary of arms dealer Sanjay Bhandari. The BJP has accused him of being close to Robert Vadra.

Shantanu Sen, former joint director, CBI, says the rot began in 2000 when the agency stopped direct recruitment of officers, something the CBI needs to restart. “Lal Bahadur Shastri and agency founder director D.P. Kohli had visualised the CBI as made up of a backbone of directly recruited officers who were trained to be investigators, who could take cases to their logical end and stand up to political pressure.”

Appointing an IG level officer whose first action was to transfer or allot ‘additional charge’ to 13 officers, several of whom were investigating Asthana, to head the agency, is unlikely to reduce the stench of political interference surrounding the government’s relationship with the CBI.

—with Rohit Parihar and Amarnath K. Menon